[FIXED] Pytesseract is failing with PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied due to undeletable file

Issue

I Installed the 64bit version from https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/tesseract/wiki then pip install pytesseract cv2 didn't cause any issues

My code:

import cv2
import pytesseract
pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd=r"C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe"

img = cv2.imread("test.png")
text = pytesseract.image_to_string(img)
print(text)

my code fails at line 6 with the

PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\Users\\nicol\\AppData\\Local\\Temp\\tess_puh3wgus'

it seems it fails at the function

def cleanup(temp_name):
    """ Tries to remove temp files by filename wildcard path. """
    for filename in iglob(temp_name + '*' if temp_name else temp_name):
        try:
            remove(filename)
        except OSError as e:
            if e.errno != ENOENT:
                raise e

line 131 in cleanup function at remove(filename).

It seems like it tries to remove the temp files but fails since the system denies access so-

I tried running the Spyder IDE with admin rights, I tried giving C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe full permissions. I ran a full anaconda update. I also tried changing the paths of TEMP and TMP system variables to places were admin rights(C:\Temp) are not required.

PermissionError: [WinError 5] Access is denied: 'C:\\Temp\\tess_hxw9iwvr.PNG'

So far I have identified the problem the pytesseract.py script creates a duplicate of the provided image, a text file with the desired output and a 0B empty file all synonymous in the format tess_[a-z0-9].extension. The problem is caused by the empty file when I try to delete it requires elevation (which I have since I am my system admin) I press the ok it briefly goes to 0% deletion and it says after access is denied because admin rights are required try again or cancel.

prompt try again

Solution

I guess The cleanup() function tries to remove() the file and gets access denied. Disabling the cleanup() function of the pytesseract.py covers up the problem but I managed to get the expected output with the collateral of 3 undeleted "temporary" files. Running the script again seems to replace the 0B file with a new one only if I tried to delete the file.

Answered By - Nicolai Sergeev