I have to come back 5 folders in path then I need to enter 3 folders further and check if file exist.
Lets imagine two paths:
1) C:\a\b\c\d\e\f\g\
2) C:\a\2\3\4\5\test.xml
Then my program right now is on the first path.
I need to check if file test.xml (on the second path) exists.
For that I know method File.Exists(path), however I have problems with path.
I am able to come back until folder a and check if the file is there.
For example to check if the file on the path exists:
3) C:\a\test2.xml
I may use:
File.Exists(#".\.\.\.\.\.\" + #"test2.xml");
But nevertheless my attempts to navigate to second path ( 2) ) and check if this file exists I can not to that. May anyone help me with that ? Thanks in advance. Regards.
. refers to the current directory
.. refers to the directory one level above the current
In your example:
..\..\..\..\..\..\2\3\4\5\test.xml
This moves up to the a directory then traverses down to 5 where your file resides.
Something that might be helpful to test your path and ensure you are where you think you are is this:
string currentPath = Path.GetFullPath(relativePath);
And then check the value of currentPath, if it winds up somewhere you didn't expect you can debug your path traversal rather than your code.
You just need to use .. to signify a parent directory.
Try:
File.Exists(#"..\..\..\..\..\..\" + #"test2.xml");
I want to read from a file. But i do not how to alter to the correct filepath.
I just want to read from a file called Level.txt. If I do; string path = "Level.txt".
The program tries to search it from; C:\...\ProjIV\ProjIV\bin\x86\debug\Level.txt.
When I want the damn thing in: C:\...\ProjIV\ProjIV\ProjIVContent\Level.txt.
Skip the second question. As someone else said, one question at the time. Also; solved.
If you just provide a path like that, your program will search in the running (working) directory that it is executing in. You can provide an explicit path:
C:\<whatever you need here>\ProjIV\ProjIV\ProjIVContent\Level.txt
Or a relative path:
..\..\..\..\ProjIVContent\Level.txt
That's pretty ugly though, I'd stick with the first one. Or move Level.txt into your working directory.
I know several similar questions were asked in the past and I also know I could use Directory.Exists() or File.Exists() or to check the file system using API calls but I'm trying to make this decision simply based on an input string.
public bool ValidateOutputFilename ( string sPath )
{
// check if sPath is actually a filename
}
My guess is that it's not possible because something that looks like a folder name (no extension but no trailing \) may actually be a file (for example C:\A\B\C may represent a file or a folder and vice versa).
The reason I want to avoid a file system check is because the path may / may not exist and sPath may represent a network location in which case the file system query will be slow.
I'm hoping that someone can recommend an idea I haven't already considered.
I think you can't avoid a file system call.
Only the file system knows for sure.
As you have said, a simple, well formatted, string is unidentifiable as a path or file.
A way to answer to your question is through the File.GetAttributes method.
It returns a FileAttributes enum value that can be tested with a bitwise AND to find if the Directory bit is set and is the fastest method (apart from a direct unmanaged call).
try
{
// get the file attributes for file or directory
FileAttributes attr = File.GetAttributes(sPath);
bool isDir = ((attr & FileAttributes.Directory) == FileAttributes.Directory) ? true : false;
if (isDir == false)
....
else
....
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
// here as an example. probably you should handle this in the calling code
MessageBox.Show("GetAttributes", ex.Message);
}
Of course, if the file or directory represented by the path not exist you get an exception that should be handled.
As a side note: Directory.Exists or File.Exists could tell you if a file or directory exists with the specified name, but how do you call the correct one if you don't know what your path string represents? You need to call both to be sure.
There is no way to get more information about a file unless you physically read it. From what I understand, you want to avoid reading the file.
You have no other option but to verify extensions and trailing slashes contained in the string. But even like that, the result will never be real. For example, I just created this folder in my d:
D:\Music\file.txt
and I created this file inside:
D:\Music\file.txt\folder
I use this code for finding the debug directory
public string str_directory = Environment.CurrentDirectory.ToString();
"C:\\Users\\Masoud\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2008\\Projects\\MyProj\\MyProj\\bin\\Debug"
How can I find the parent folder as shown below?
"C:\\Users\\Masoud\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2008\\Projects\\MyProj\\MyProj"
You can use System.IO.Directory.GetParent() to retrieve the parent directory of a given directory.
string parent = System.IO.Directory.GetParent(str_directory).FullName;
See BOL
If you append ..\.. to your existing path, the operating system will correctly browse the grand-parent folder.
That should do the job:
System.IO.Path.Combine("C:\\Users\\Masoud\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2008\\Projects\\MyProj\\MyProj\\bin\\Debug", #"..\..");
If you browse that path, you will browse the grand-parent directory.
Edit: The normalization covered in this answer only happens when the path is used to access the file system, but not on the string itself. By contrast, this answer achieves the result and normalization purely using path strings, without using the file system at all.
I've found variants of System.IO.Path.Combine(myPath, "..") to be the easiest and most reliable. Even more so if what northben says is true, that GetParent requires an extra call if there is a trailing slash. That, to me, is unreliable.
Path.Combine makes sure you never go wrong with slashes.
.. behaves exactly like it does everywhere else in Windows. You can add any number of \.. to a path in cmd or explorer and it will behave exactly as I describe below.
Some basic .. behavior:
If there is a file name, .. will chop that off:
Path.Combine(#"D:\Grandparent\Parent\Child.txt", "..") => D:\Grandparent\Parent\
If the path is a directory, .. will move up a level:
Path.Combine(#"D:\Grandparent\Parent\", "..") => D:\Grandparent\
..\.. follows the same rules, twice in a row:
Path.Combine(#"D:\Grandparent\Parent\Child.txt", #"..\..") => D:\Grandparent\
Path.Combine(#"D:\Grandparent\Parent\", #"..\..") => D:\
And this has the exact same effect:
Path.Combine(#"D:\Grandparent\Parent\Child.txt", "..", "..") => D:\Grandparent\
Path.Combine(#"D:\Grandparent\Parent\", "..", "..") => D:\
To get a 'grandparent' directory, call Directory.GetParent() twice:
var gparent = Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetParent(str_directory).ToString());
Directory.GetParent is probably a better answer, but for completeness there's a different method that takes string and returns string: Path.GetDirectoryName.
string parent = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(str_directory);
Like this:
System.IO.DirectoryInfo myDirectory = new DirectoryInfo(Environment.CurrentDirectory);
string parentDirectory = myDirectory.Parent.FullName;
Good luck!
No one has provided a solution that would work cross-form. I know it wasn't specifically asked but I am working in a linux environment where most of the solutions (as at the time I post this) would provide an error.
Hardcoding path separators (as well as other things) will give an error in anything but Windows systems.
In my original solution I used:
char filesep = Path.DirectorySeparatorChar;
string datapath = $"..{filesep}..{filesep}";
However after seeing some of the answers here I adjusted it to be:
string datapath = Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).FullName).FullName;
You might want to look into the DirectoryInfo.Parent property.
IO.Path.GetFullPath(#"..\..")
If you clear the "bin\Debug\" in the Project properties -> Build -> Output path, then you can just use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
Since nothing else I have found helps to solve this in a truly normalized way, here is another answer.
Note that some answers to similar questions try to use the Uri type, but that struggles with trailing slashes vs. no trailing slashes too.
My other answer on this page works for operations that put the file system to work, but if we want to have the resolved path right now (such as for comparison reasons), without going through the file system, C:/Temp/.. and C:/ would be considered different. Without going through the file system, navigating in that manner does not provide us with a normalized, properly comparable path.
What can we do?
We will build on the following discovery:
Path.GetDirectoryName(path + "/") ?? "" will reliably give us a directory path without a trailing slash.
Adding a slash (as string, not as char) will treat a null path the same as it treats "".
GetDirectoryName will refrain from discarding the last path component thanks to the added slash.
GetDirectoryName will normalize slashes and navigational dots.
This includes the removal of any trailing slashes.
This includes collapsing .. by navigating up.
GetDirectoryName will return null for an empty path, which we coalesce to "".
How do we use this?
First, normalize the input path:
dirPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(dirPath + "/") ?? ""; // To handle nulls, we append "/" rather than '/'
Then, we can get the parent directory, and we can repeat this operation any number of times to navigate further up:
// This is reliable if path results from this or the previous operation
path = Path.GetDirectoryName(path);
Note that we have never touched the file system. No part of the path needs to exist, as it would if we had used DirectoryInfo.
To avoid issues with trailing \, call it this way:
string ParentFolder = Directory.GetParent( folder.Trim('\\')).FullName;
To get your solution
try this
string directory = System.IO.Directory.GetParent(System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString()).ToString();
This is the most common way -- it really depends on what you are doing exactly:
(To explain, the example below will remove the last 10 characters which is what you asked for, however if there are some business rules that are driving your need to find a specific location you should use those to retrieve the directory location, not find the location of something else and modify it.)
// remove last 10 characters from a string
str_directory = str_directory.Substring(0,str_directory.Length-10);
You shouldn't try to do that. Environment.CurrentDirectory gives you the path of the executable directory. This is consistent regardless of where the .exe file is. You shouldn't try to access a file that is assumed to be in a backwards relative location
I would suggest you move whatever resource you want to access into a local location. Of a system directory (such as AppData)
In my case I am using .NET 6. When I use:
public string str_directory = Environment.CurrentDirectory.ToString();
returns C:\Projects\MyTestProject\bin\Debug\net6.0
In order to reach C:\Projects\MyTestProject I am using the following:
Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).Parent.Parent
You can chain Parent to Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory) in order to reach the directory you want.
Final version:
public string str_directory = Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).Parent.Parent.ToString();
If I have an executable called app.exe which is what I am coding in C#, how would I get files from a folder loaded in the same directory as the app.exe, using relative paths?
This throws an illegal characters in path exception:
string [ ] files = Directory.GetFiles ( "\\Archive\\*.zip" );
How would one do this in C#?
To make sure you have the application's path (and not just the current directory), use this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process.getcurrentprocess.aspx
Now you have a Process object that represents the process that is running.
Then use Process.MainModule.FileName:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.processmodule.filename.aspx
Finally, use Path.GetDirectoryName to get the folder containing the .exe:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.path.getdirectoryname.aspx
So this is what you want:
string folder = Path.GetDirectoryName(Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName) + #"\Archive\";
string filter = "*.zip";
string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(folder, filter);
(Notice that "\Archive\" from your question is now #"\Archive\": you need the # so that the \ backslashes aren't interpreted as the start of an escape sequence)
Hope that helps!
string currentDirectory = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);
string archiveFolder = Path.Combine(currentDirectory, "archive");
string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(archiveFolder, "*.zip");
The first parameter is the path. The second is the search pattern you want to use.
Write it like this:
string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(#".\Archive", "*.zip");
. is for relative to the folder where you started your exe, and # to allow \ in the name.
When using filters, you pass it as a second parameter. You can also add a third parameter to specify if you want to search recursively for the pattern.
In order to get the folder where your .exe actually resides, use:
var executingPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().Location);
As others have said, you can/should prepend the string with # (though you could also just escape the backslashes), but what they glossed over (that is, didn't bring it up despite making a change related to it) was the fact that, as I recently discovered, using \ at the beginning of a pathname, without . to represent the current directory, refers to the root of the current directory tree.
C:\foo\bar>cd \
C:\>
versus
C:\foo\bar>cd .\
C:\foo\bar>
(Using . by itself has the same effect as using .\ by itself, from my experience. I don't know if there are any specific cases where they somehow would not mean the same thing.)
You could also just leave off the leading .\ , if you want.
C:\foo>cd bar
C:\foo\bar>
In fact, if you really wanted to, you don't even need to use backslashes. Forwardslashes work perfectly well! (Though a single / doesn't alias to the current drive root as \ does.)
C:\>cd foo/bar
C:\foo\bar>
You could even alternate them.
C:\>cd foo/bar\baz
C:\foo\bar\baz>
...I've really gone off-topic here, though, so feel free to ignore all this if you aren't interested.
Pretty straight forward, use relative path
string[] offerFiles = Directory.GetFiles(Server.MapPath("~/offers"), "*.csv");