Question

I am trying to port some Python code to .NET, and I was wondering if there were equivalents of the following Python functions in .NET, or some code snippets that have the same functionality.

os.path.split()
os.path.basename()

Edit

os.path.basename() in Python returns the tail of os.path.split, not the result of System.IO.Path.GetPathRoot(path)

I think the following method creates a suitable port of the os.path.split function, any tweaks are welcome. It follows the description of os.path.split from http://docs.python.org/library/os.path.html as much as possible I believe.

    public static string[] PathSplit(string path)
    {
        string head = string.Empty;
        string tail = string.Empty;

        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(path))
        {
            head = Path.GetDirectoryName(path);
            tail = path.Replace(head + "\\", "");
        }

        return new[] { head, tail };
    }

I’m unsure about the way I’m returning the head and tail, as I didn’t really want to pass out the head and tail via parameters to the method.

Answer 1

os.path.basename()

The alternative is System.IO.Path.GetPathRoot(path);:

System.IO.Path.GetPathRoot("C:\\Foo\\Bar.xml") // Equals C:\\

Edit: The above returned the first path of the path, where basename should return the tail of the path. See the code below for an example of how this could be achieved.

os.path.split()

Unfortunately there’s no alternative to this as there’s no .Net equivalent. The closest you can find is System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(path), however if your path was C:\Foo, then GetDirectoryName would give you C:\Foo instead of C: and Foo. This would only work if you wanted to get the Directory Name of an actual file path.

So you’ll have to write some code like the following to break these down for you:

public void EquivalentSplit(string path, out string head, out string tail)
{

    // Get the directory separation character (i.e. '\').
    string separator = System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString();

    // Trim any separators at the end of the path
    string lastCharacter = path.Substring(path.Length - 1);
    if (separator == lastCharacter)
    {
        path = path.Substring(0, path.Length - 1);
    }

    int lastSeparatorIndex = path.LastIndexOf(separator);

    head = path.Substring(0, lastSeparatorIndex);
    tail = path.Substring(lastSeparatorIndex + separator.Length,
        path.Length - lastSeparatorIndex - separator.Length);

}