Question

I was wondering what would be a good way to scan a directory that has characters you are not sure of.

For example, I want to scan

C:\Program\Version2.*\Files

Meaning

• The folder is located in C:\Program
• Version2.* could be anything like Version2.33, Version2.1, etc.
• That folder has a folder named Files in it

I know that I could do something like foreach (directory) if contains("Version2."), but I was wondering if there was a better way of doing so.

Answer 1

Directory.EnumerateDirectories accepts search pattern. So enumerate parent that has wildcard and than enumerate the rest:

  var directories = 
    Directory.EnumerateDirectories(@"C:\Program\", "Version2.*")
     .SelectMany(parent => Directory.EnumerateDirectories(parent,"Files"))

Note: if path can contain wildcards on any level – simply normalize path and split by “\”, than collect folders level by level.