If I have a string variable that has:
"C:\temp\temp2\foo\bar.txt"
and I want to get
"foo"
what is the best way to do this?
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6 Answers
Use:
new FileInfo(@"C:\temp\temp2\foo\bar.txt").Directory.Name
5 Comments
GuiSim
According to msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… the FileInfo constructor can throw if the caller does not have the required permission. Is there an alternative that will only parse the string without any IO ?
Jon Skeet
@GuiSim: Not that I'm aware of.
Danilo Bargen
In case someone needs the full directory path, use
new FileInfo(@"C:\temp\temp2\foo\bar.txt").DirectoryName instead.
Daniel B
String manipulation: var dir= _installPath.Split(new[]{Path.DirectorySeparatorChar}, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Last();
The Muffin Man
I'm convinced that Google has some top secret Stack Overflow infiltration department and Jon Skeet is one of their highly trained operatives. There's no other way someone working at a demanding company like Google has this much free time to answer questions.
Far be it for me to disagree with the Skeet, but I've always used
Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(@"C:\temp\temp2\foo\bar.txt")
I suspect that FileInfo actually touches the file system to get it's info, where as I'd expect that GetFileNameWithoutExtension is only string operations - so performance of one over the other might be better.
5 Comments
Kit Roed
There's a slight difference in results here... I think your approach returns "bar" when the question is asking how to get "foo" the file's containing directory...
Handleman
I learned two things today... Read the question and never disagree with the Skeet.
Karl Johan
Doesn't Path.getDirectoryName do exactly what he wants?
Martin Clarke
Path.GetDirectoryName would return "C:\temp\temp2\foo"
Callie J
You could do
Path.GetFileName(Path.GetDirectoryName(filepath)) - which in testing appears to do the job, and doesn't touch the filesystem.I think most simple solution is
DirectoryInfo dinfo = new DirectoryInfo(path); string folderName= dinfo.Parent.Name;
Comments
Building on Handleman's suggestion, you can do:
Path.GetFileName(Path.GetDirectoryName(path))
This doesn't touch the filesystem (unlike FileInfo), and will do what's required. This will work with folders because, as the MSDN says:
Return value: 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. If path is null, this method returns null.
Also, looking at the reference source confirms that GetFilename doesn't care if the path passed in is a file or a folder: it's just doing pure string manipulation.
Comments
I had an occasion when I was looping through parent child directories
string[] years = Directory.GetDirectories(ROOT);
foreach (var year in years)
{
DirectoryInfo info = new DirectoryInfo(year);
Console.WriteLine(info.Name);
Console.WriteLine(year);
//Month directories
string[] months = Directory.GetDirectories(year);
foreach (var month in months)
{
Console.WriteLine(month);
//Day directories
string[] days = Directory.GetDirectories(month);
foreach (var day in days)
{
//checkes the files in the days
Console.WriteLine(day);
string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(day);
foreach (var file in files)
{
Console.WriteLine(file);
}
}
}
}
using this line I was able to get only the current directory name
DirectoryInfo info = new DirectoryInfo(year);
Console.WriteLine(info.Name);
Comments
It'll depend on how you want to handle the data, but another option is to use String.Split.
string myStr = @"C:\foo\bar.txt";
string[] paths = myStr.Split('\\');
string dir = paths[paths.Length - 2]; //returns "foo"
This doesn't check for an array out of bounds exception, but you get the idea.
