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How to get a file full path in c# with Path.GetFullPath

I am trying to get the full path a file by its name only.
I have tried to use :
string fullPath = Path.GetFullPath("excelTest");
but it returns me an incorrect path (something with my project path).
I have read somewhere here a comment which says to do the following:
var dir = Environment.SpecialFolder.ProgramFilesX86;
var path = Path.Combine(dir.ToString(), "excelTest.csv");
but I do not know where the file is saved , therefore I do not know its environment.
can someone help me how to get the full path of a file only by its name?

The first snippet (with Path.GetFullPath) does exactly what you want. It returns something with your project path because the program EXE file is located in the project\Bin\Debug path, which is therefore the "current directory".
If you want to search for a file on a drive, you can use Directory.GetFiles, which will recursively search for a file in a directory given a name pattern.
This returns all xml-files recursively :
var allFiles = Directory.GetFiles(path, "*.xml", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143316%28v=vs.100%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143448.aspx#Y252
https://stackoverflow.com/a/9830162/2196124

I guess you're trying to find file (like in windows search), right ?
I'd look into this question - you will find all files that has that string in their filename, and from there you can return full filepath.
var fileList = new DirectoryInfo(#"c:\").GetFiles("*excelTest*", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
And then just use foreach to do you manipulations, e.g.
foreach(string file in fileList)
{
// MessageBox.Show(file);
}

What you're looking for is Directory.GetFiles(), you can read up on it here. The gist of it is, you'll pass in the file path and the file name, and you'll get a string array back. In this instance, you can assume top level with C:\. It should be noted, that if nothing is found, the string array will be empty.

You have passed a relative file name to Path.GetFullPath. Microsoft documentation states:
If path is a relative path, GetFullPath returns a fully qualified path that can be based on the current drive and current directory. The current drive and current directory can change at any time as an application executes. As a result, the path returned by this overload cannot be determined in advance.
You cannot get the same full path name from a relative path unless your current directory is the same each time you invoke the function.

"Could not find a part of the path" error message

I am programming in c# and want to copy a folder with subfolders from a flash disk to startup.
Here is my code:
private void copyBat()
{
try
{
string source_dir = "E:\\Debug\\VipBat";
string destination_dir = "C:\\Users\\pc\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup";
if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(destination_dir))
{
System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(destination_dir);
}
// Create subdirectory structure in destination
foreach (string dir in Directory.GetDirectories(source_dir, "*", System.IO.SearchOption.AllDirectories))
{
Directory.CreateDirectory(destination_dir + dir.Substring(source_dir.Length));
}
foreach (string file_name in Directory.GetFiles(source_dir, "*.*", System.IO.SearchOption.AllDirectories))
{
File.Copy(file_name, destination_dir + file_name.Substring(source_dir.Length), true);
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
MessageBox.Show(e.Message, "HATA", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Warning);
}
}
I got an error:
Could not find a part of the path E:\Debug\VipBat

The path you are trying to access is not present.
string source_dir = "E:\\Debug\\VipBat\\{0}";
I'm sure that this is not the correct path. Debug folder directly in E: drive looks wrong to me. I guess there must be the project name folder directory present.
Second thing; what is {0} in your string. I am sure that it is an argument placeholder because folder name cannot contains {0} such name. So you need to use String.Format() to replace the actual value.
string source_dir = String.Format("E:\\Debug\\VipBat\\{0}",variableName);
But first check the path existence that you are trying to access.

There's something wrong. You have written:
string source_dir = #"E:\\Debug\\VipBat\\{0}";
and the error was
Could not find a part of the path E\Debug\VCCSBat
This is not the same directory.
In your code there's a problem, you have to use:
string source_dir = #"E:\Debug\VipBat"; // remove {0} and the \\ if using #
or
string source_dir = "E:\\Debug\\VipBat"; // remove {0} and the # if using \\

Is the drive E a mapped drive? Then, it can be created by another account other than the user account. This may be the cause of the error.

I had the same error, although in my case the problem was with the formatting of the DESTINATION path. The comments above are correct with respect to debugging the path string formatting, but there seems to be a bug in the File.Copy exception reporting where it still throws back the SOURCE path instead of the DESTINATION path. So don't forget to look here as well.
-TC

Probably unrelated, but consider using Path.Combine instead of destination_dir + dir.Substring(...). From the look of it, your .Substring() will leave a backlash at the beginning, but the helper classes like Path are there for a reason.

There can be one of the two cause for this error:
Path is not correct - but it is less likely as CreateDirectory should create any path unless path itself is not valid, read invalid characters
Account through which your application is running don't have rights to create directory at path location, like if you are trying to create directory on shared drive with not enough privileges etc

File.Copy(file_name, destination_dir + file_name.Substring(source_dir.Length), true);
This line has the error because what the code expected is the directory name + file name, not the file name.
This is the correct one
File.Copy(source_dir + file_name, destination_dir + file_name.Substring(source_dir.Length), true);

We just had this error message occur because the full path was greater than 260 characters -- the Windows limit for a path and file name. The error message is misleading in this case, but shortening the path solved it for us, if that's an option.

I resolved a similar issue by simply restarting Visual Studio with admin rights.
The problem was because it couldn't open one project related to Sharepoint without elevated access.

This could also be the issue: Space in the folder name
Example:
Let this be your path:
string source_dir = #"E:\Debug\VipBat";
If you try accessing this location without trying to check if directory exists, and just in case the directory had a space at the end, like :
"VipBat    ", instead of just "VipBat" the space at the end will not be visible when you see in the file explorer.
So make sure you got the correct folder name and dont add spaces to folder names. And a best practice is to check if folder exists before you keep the file there.

Copy and paste a file programmaticaly

Question Background:
I need to copy and paste (move) a file from one folder location to another.
Issue:
The File.Copy method of System.IO requires the that both parameters are of known file locations. I only know one file path location - in this case localDevPath. localQAPath is the folder path where I want the copied file to be moved too.
string localDevPath = #"C:\Folder1\testFile.cs";
string localQaPath = #"C:\Folder2\";
File.Copy(localDevPath, localQaPath);
Can anyone tell me how to go about carrying out this 'copy and paste' method I'm trying to implement.

string localDevPath = #"C:\Folder1\testFile.cs";
string localQaPath = #"C:\Folder2\";
FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(localDevPath);
fi.MoveTo(Path.Combine(localQaPath, fi.Name));

Assuming that these are user-provided paths and you can't simply include the filename in the second path, then you need to extract the last path element from localDevPath and then add it to localQaPath. You could probably do that with Path.GetFilename.

I'm guessing the issue here is that the filename is variable, in which case, you could do something like this to extract the filename from the full path of localDevPath:
string localDevPath = #"C:\Folder1\testFile.cs";
string localQaPath = #"C:\Folder2\";
string[] tokens = localDevPath.Split(#"\");
localQaPath += tokens[tokens.Length-1];
File.Copy(localDevPath, localQaPath);
Documentation on File.Copy is on MSDN. There is an overload that accepts a boolean, to allow overwriting if there is a naming conflict.

If what you want to do is move the file from one location to another, the method you are looking for is MoveTo. It is a method of the FileInfo class. There is a very complete example in the MSDN Library here: FileInfo.MoveTo Example

C# How to grep the last word from a directory path?

I have a program that "greps" out various directory paths from a log text file and prints various results according to the word.
Examples of Directory paths:
C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.lnk
C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Start Menu/Programs/AccessData
C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier
Therefore how can I grep out the file or folder name after the last "/"? This is to help the program to identify between files and folder. Please do take note of the multiple "." and white spaces found within a directory paths. etc "Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier". Therefore it is difficult to use if(!name.contains()".")
Etc. How to get the "AccessData FTK Imager.lnk" or "AccessData" or "AccessData FTK Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier" from the path STRING?!
May someone please advise on the methods or codes to solve this problem? Thanks!
The codes:
if (!token[7].Contains("."))
{
Console.WriteLine("The path is a folder?");
Console.WriteLine(token[7]);
Console.WriteLine(actions);
MacActions(actions);
x = 1;
}

Use the Path class when working with file paths, and use the File and Directory class when working with actual files and folders.
string str1=#"C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.lnk";
string str2=#"C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Start Menu/Programs/AccessData";
string str3=#"C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.exe:Zone.Identifier";
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFileName(str1));
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFileName(str2));
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFileName(str3));
outputs:
AccessData FTK Imager.lnk
AccessData
Zone.Identifier <-- it chokes here because of the :
This class operates on strings, as I do not have those particular files and/or folders on my system. Also it's impossible to determine whether AccessData is meant to be a folder or a file without an extension.
I could use some common sense and declare everything with an extension to be a file (Path.GetFileExtension can be used here) and everything else to be a folder.
Or I could just check it the string in question is indeed a file or a folder on my machine using (File.Exists and Directory.Exists respectively).
if (File.Exists(str2))
Console.WriteLine("It's a file");
else if (Directory.Exists(str2))
Console.WriteLine("It's a folder");
else
Console.WriteLine("It's not a real file or folder");

Use Path.GetFileName.
The characters after the last directory character in path. If the last character of path is a directory or volume separator character, this method returns String.Empty.

This is to help the program to identify between files and folder
There is no way to determine is a path represents a file or folder, unless you access the actual file system. A directory name like 'Foo.exe' would be perfectly valid, and a file with no extension ('Foobar') would be valid too.

how about tokenized it with "/" like what you're doing ... and then you'll know that the last token is the file, and whatever before it is the path.

You can simply split the whole string by /
e.g.:
string a="C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Desktop/AccessData FTK Imager.lnk";
string[] words=a.split('/');
int len=words.length;
so now words[len] returns the data after last slash(/)..
I hope you understand...

I guess you only have a string that represents the name of the file, if that is the case you can't really be sure. It's totally ok to have a folder namen something like Folder.doc. So if you don't have access to the actual file system it is hard to check. You can get close though using regular expression like:
(.*\\)(.+)(\..*)
Try it on: http://www.regexplanet.com/simple/index.html
If you get any output in group number 3 it's likely that it is a file and not a folder. If you don't get some output try this direct after:
(.*\\)(.+)(\..*)?
That will give you the folder in group 2.

Does this C# routine to delete all files that are NOT in an array look alright?

I have a DB that contains a list of paths to files. I want to build a routine to cleanup the folders, removing files in the directories if there is not a db record for it (for temp ajax file uploads, in cases where the user doesn't complete the form, etc...).
I'm thinking something like this:
var dbFiles = db.allPaths();
var allFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles(path);
foreach (var f in allFiles) {
if (!dbFiles.Contains(f) {
File.Delete(f);
}
}
Any "Gotchas" waiting for me? The routine will be set to run once a week at first, more often if temp files become a problem. It will be run during a time when there are nearly no users on, so performance - while important - is not paramount.
UPDATE
Wow, lots of great answers. This bit of code is turning into something "share" worthy. ;D My code above was just a simple, quick placeholder bit... but it's transformed into solid code. Thank you!

Looks okay, but you can make it simpler:
foreach (var file in allFiles.Except(dbFiles))
{
File.Delete(file);
}
You've got to make sure that the paths are in exactly the same format though. If one list has relative files and the other has absolute files, or if one uses "/" and the other uses "\" you'll end up deleting things you don't expect to.
Ideally you'd canonicalise the files explicitly first, but I can't see a nice way of getting a canonical file name in .NET...
EDIT: Note that Path.GetFullPath does not canonicalize. It fixes slashes and makes it absolute, but it doesn't address case: "c:/users" becomes "c:\users", but "c:/Users" becomes "c:\Users".
This could be fixed by using a string comparer in the call to Except:
var dbFiles = db.AllPaths().Select(Path.GetFullPath));
var allFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles(path).Select(Path.GetFullPath));
foreach (var file in allFiles.Except(dbFiles, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
File.Delete(file);
}
Now that's ignoring case - but in an "ordinal" manner. I don't know what the Windows file system really does in terms of its case sensitivity.

Looks good to me; however I've never deleted files within C#, just VB.
However, you might want to throw that into a Try/Catch loop, as if the file isn't able to be deleted (read-only, currently in use, no longer exists, etc.), it will throw an exception.
EDIT: How are the paths stored? Remember, in C# you need to escape out paths "//" instead of using "\" IIRC.
EDIT 2: Scratch that last edit out lol.

To combine all the suggestions into one:
// canonicalize paths
var dbFiles = db.allPaths().Select(Path.GetFullPath);
var allFiles = Directory.EnumerateFiles(Path.GetFullPath(path))
foreach (var file in allFiles.Except(dbFiles, StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
try {
File.Delete(file);
} catch (IOException) {
// handle exception here
}
}

I think it's alright in spirit, though it would be closer to:
List<string> dbFiles = db.allPaths();
string[] allFiles = Directory.GetFiles(path);
foreach (string f in allFiles)
if (!dbFiles.Contains(f))
File.Delete(f);