Question

In .NET is there a function that tests if a string is syntactically a correct path? I specifically don’t want it to test if the path actually exists.

my current take on this is a regex:

([a-zA-Z]:|\\)?\\?([^/\\:*?'<>|]+[/\\])*[^/\\:*?'<>|]* 

matches:

c:\ bbbb \\bob/john\ ..\..\ 

rejects:

xy: c:\\bob 

Answer 1

I’d suggest just using a regex for this since you specifically don’t want to test if the path exists.

Here’s something google helped me dig up:

RegEx='^([a-zA-Z]\:|\\\\[^\/\\:*?'<>|]+\\[^\/\\:*?'<>|]+)(\\[^\/\\:*?'<>|]+)+(\.[^\/\\:*?'<>|]+)$' 

You could combine this with System.IO.Path.GetInvalidPathChars() method and make the regex dynamically exclude all of the invalid characters.