Question

i want to get a random directory from a specified directory, for example, the desktop.

im not sure how to do this, this and the only thing I’m having trouble with for my application

for example i have 5 different directories on the desktop called

Dir1
Dir2
Dir3, etc…

i would like to get Dir3, then maybe Dir1, after that maybe Dir3 again, and so on. i want to get a random directory from the desktop…dont really know how to explain it any better…

A specified a directory – a directory that i specify maybe in a text box for example. or a folder browser dialog

also i just want to get the path of the directory, i dont want to do anything to it.

If anyone could provide some information I would be greatly appreciative 😀

thanks everyone!

Answer 1

This kind of smells like homework to me. But I’ve got some time to kill. The function below takes a path as a string and returns a random subfolder as a string.

Public Function GetRandomSubFolder(path As String) As String
    ''//Static create a Random object so that we do not create a new one each time
    Static R As New Random()

    ''//Sanity check
    If Not System.IO.Directory.Exists(path) Then Throw New System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException("path")

    ''//Get the subfolders as an array
    Dim SubFolders = System.IO.Directory.GetDirectories(path)

    ''//Sanity check
    If SubFolders.Count = 0 Then Throw New ApplicationException("Could not find any subfolders")


    ''//Get a random number. The second parameter is exclusive so (0,4) will always return 3 as a maximum
    Dim RandomIndex As Integer = R.Next(0, SubFolders.Count)

    ''//Return the path at that index
    Return SubFolders(RandomIndex)
End Function