Question

I am attempting to retrieve jpeg and jpg files using the following statement:

string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(someDirectoryPath, "*.jp?g");

MSDN’s docs for System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(string, string) state that ? represents “Exactly zero or one character.”, however the above block selects jpeg files but omits jpg files.

I am currently using the overly-permissive search pattern "*.jp*g" to achieve my results, but it wrinkles my brain because it should work.

Answer 1

From the docs you linked to:

A searchPattern with a file extension of one, two, or more than three characters returns only files having extensions of exactly that length that match the file extension specified in the searchPattern.

I suspect that’s the problem. To be honest, I’d probably fetch all the files and then postprocess them in code – it’ll make for code which is simpler to reason about than relying on the Windows path-handling oddities.