Question

From the Immediate Window in Visual Studio:

> Path.Combine(@'C:\x', 'y') 'C:\\x\\y' > Path.Combine(@'C:\x', @'\y') '\\y' 

It seems that they should both be the same.

The old FileSystemObject.BuildPath() didn’t work this way…

Answer 1

This is kind of a philosophical question (which perhaps only Microsoft can truly answer), since it’s doing exactly what the documentation says.

System.IO.Path.Combine

‘If path2 contains an absolute path, this method returns path2.’

Here’s the actual Combine method from the .NET source. You can see that it calls CombineNoChecks, which then calls IsPathRooted on path2 and returns that path if so:

public static String Combine(String path1, String path2) {     if (path1==null || path2==null)         throw new ArgumentNullException((path1==null) ? 'path1' : 'path2');     Contract.EndContractBlock();     CheckInvalidPathChars(path1);     CheckInvalidPathChars(path2);      return CombineNoChecks(path1, path2); }  internal static string CombineNoChecks(string path1, string path2) {     if (path2.Length == 0)         return path1;      if (path1.Length == 0)         return path2;      if (IsPathRooted(path2))         return path2;      char ch = path1[path1.Length - 1];     if (ch != DirectorySeparatorChar && ch != AltDirectorySeparatorChar &&             ch != VolumeSeparatorChar)          return path1 + DirectorySeparatorCharAsString + path2;     return path1 + path2; } 

I don’t know what the rationale is. I guess the solution is to strip off (or Trim) DirectorySeparatorChar from the beginning of the second path; maybe write your own Combine method that does that and then calls Path.Combine().