Question

I am currently looking for a regex that can help validate a file path e.g.:

C:\test\test2\test.exe

Answer 1

I decided to post this answer which does use a regular expression.

^(?:[a-zA-Z]\:|\\\\[\w\.]+\\[\w.$]+)\\(?:[\w]+\\)*\w([\w.])+$

Works for these:

\\test\test$\TEST.xls
\\server\share\folder\myfile.txt
\\server\share\myfile.txt
\\123.123.123.123\share\folder\myfile.txt
c:\folder\myfile.txt
c:\folder\myfileWithoutExtension

Edit: Added example usage:

if (Regex.IsMatch (text, @"^(?:[a-zA-Z]\:|\\\\[\w\.]+\\[\w.$]+)\\(?:[\w]+\\)*\w([\w.])+$"))
{
  // Valid
}

*Edit: * This is an approximation of the paths you could see. If possible, it is probably better to use the Path class or FileInfo class to see if a file or folder exists.