Question

I wrote a simple console tool that reads a file and then writes something out. I intend to just drag and drop files and then out pops the output in the same directory as the input file.

All of the testing works, and when I call it from command-line, everything comes out as expected. However, when I tried dragging and dropping it in explorer, no files were created.

I did a search through the system and found that they were all dumped at Documents and Settings under my user folder, and when I printed out the full path that’s what it said.

Which is weird. Wouldn’t Path.GetFullPath return the absolute path of the input file? Instead it looks like it just combined that user directory path to the input’s filename.

EDIT: here’s the code. I feel like I’ve made a logic error somewhere but can’t seem to see it.

filename = System.IO.Path.GetFileName(args[i]);
abspath = Path.GetFullPath(filename);
dirpath = Path.GetDirectoryName(abspath);
....
Console.WriteLine(dirpath);

Answer 1

Path.GetFullPath should return the absolute path of the path string you pass in.

Path.GetFileName(string path) only returns the filename and extension of the file you pass in. For example, System.IO.Path.GetFileName("C:\SomeDirectory\Test.txt"); would just return “Test.txt”. You’ll want to use the Path.GetDirectoryName to get the path of your input file, like so:

string inputDirectory = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(args[i]);

Alternately, you can use the FileInfo class to retrieve a bunch more information about your input file. For example:

// Assuming args[i] = "C:\SomeDirectory\Test.txt"
FileInfo inputFile = new FileInfo(args[i]);
string inputDirectory = inputFile.DirectoryName; // "C:\SomeDirectory"
string inputFileName = inputFile.Name; // "Test.txt"
string fullInputFile = inputFile.FullName; // "C:\SomeDirectory\Test.txt"