Question

I have to create an app that drills into a specific drive, reads all file names and replaces illegal SharePoint characters with underscores.
The illegal characters I am referring to are: ~ # % & * {} / \ | : <> ? - ""

Can someone provide either a link to code or code itself on how to do this? I am VERY new to C# and need all the help i can possibly get. I have researched code on recursively drilling through a drive but i am not sure how to put the character replace and the recursive looping together. Please help!

Answer 1

The advice for removing illegal characters is here:

How to remove illegal characters from path and filenames?

You just have to change the character set to your set of characters that you want to remove.

If you have figured out how to recurse the folders, you can get all of the files in each folder with:

var files = System.IO.Directory.EnumerateFiles(currentPath);

and then

foreach (string file in files)
{
    System.IO.File.Move(file, ConvertFileName(file));
}

The ConvertFileName method you will write to accept a filename as a string, and return a filename stripped of the bad characters.

Note that, if you are using .NET 3.5, GetFiles() works too. According to MSDN:

The EnumerateFiles and GetFiles
methods differ as follows: When you
use EnumerateFiles, you can start
enumerating the collection of names
before the whole collection is
returned; when you use GetFiles, you
must wait for the whole array of names
to be returned before you can access
the array. Therefore, when you are
working with many files and
directories, EnumerateFiles can be
more efficient.

---

How to recursively list directories

string path = @"c:\dev";
string searchPattern = "*.*";

string[] dirNameArray = Directory.GetDirectories(path, searchPattern, SearchOption.AllDirectories);

// Or, for better performance:
// (but breaks if you don't have access to a sub directory; see 2nd link below)
IEnumerable<string> dirNameEnumeration = Directory.EnumerateDirectories(path, searchPattern, SearchOption.AllDirectories);

• How to: Enumerate Directories and Files
• How to recursively list all the files in a directory in C#?