Question

It appears that there is no standard way to calculate LocalPath from a relative URI (this property is valid only for absolute URIs), to be used in conjunction with Path.Combine, for example to combine it with a file mask (*.ext). Problem is that MakeRelativeUri produces something similar to my%20folder/, instead of my folder\.

Here is a workaround that I found:

Module Module1
  Sub Main()
    Dim path1 As String = "C:\my folder\"
    Dim path2 As String = "C:\"
    MsgBox(GetPathDiff(path1, path2)) 'outputs "my folder\" (without quotes)
  End Sub

  Private Function GetPathDiff(path1 As String, path2 As String) As String
    Dim uri1 As New Uri(path1)
    Dim uri2 As New Uri(path2)
    Dim uri3 As Uri = uri2.MakeRelativeUri(uri1)
    Return Uri.UnescapeDataString(uri3.OriginalString).Replace("/", "\")
  End Function
End Module

I find it a rather clumsy way, and there might be some hidden stones I did not yet stumble upon, i.e. this method being not 100% stable for different use cases.

Is there a better way to do it?

Answer 1

[editedit]
Ok, after a bit of contemplation, I did come up with an alternative, but it may not be palatable to all:

void Main()
{
    var path1 = @"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\";
    var path2 = @"C:\temp\";
    var sb = new StringBuilder(1000);
    PathRelativePathTo(sb, path1, 0, path2, 0);
    sb.ToString().Dump();
}

/*
BOOL PathRelativePathTo(
  _Out_  LPTSTR pszPath,
  _In_   LPCTSTR pszFrom,
  _In_   DWORD dwAttrFrom,
  _In_   LPCTSTR pszTo,
  _In_   DWORD dwAttrTo
);
*/
[DllImport("Shlwapi.dll")]
[return:MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
public static extern bool PathRelativePathTo(
    [Out] StringBuilder result,
    [In] string pathFrom,
    [In] int dwAttrFrom,
    [In] string pathTo,
    [In] int dwAttrTo);

Ooh, just had an idea – does this get you (more or less) what you need?

public string PathDiff(string path1, string path2)
{
    var replace1 = path1.Replace(path2, string.Empty);
    var replace2 = path2.Replace(path1, string.Empty);
    return Path.IsPathRooted(replace1) ? replace2 : replace1;
}

Or possibly better:

public string PathDiff(string path1, string path2)
{
    return path1.Length > path2.Length ? 
        path1.Replace(path2, string.Empty) : 
        path2.Replace(path1, string.Empty);
}

(edit: derp, hit submit too soon):

There’s no built-in relative path helpers, unfortunately, but you’ve basically got it with what you’ve got, like so:

var path1 = @"C:\dev\src\release\Frontend\";
var path2 = @"C:\dev\src\";

var path1Uri = new Uri(path1);
var path2Uri = new Uri(path2);

var from1to2 = path1Uri.MakeRelativeUri(path2Uri).OriginalString;
var from2to1 = path2Uri.MakeRelativeUri(path1Uri).OriginalString;

Console.WriteLine("To go from {0} to {1}, you need to {2}", path1, path2, from1to2);
Console.WriteLine("To go from {0} to {1}, you need to {2}", path2, path1, from2to1);

Output:

To go from C:\dev\src\release\Frontend\ to C:\dev\src\, you need to ../../
To go from C:\dev\src\ to C:\dev\src\release\Frontend\, you need to release/Frontend/

Now, as for the slash differences “\” vs “/”, if you wrap the end results in Path.GetFullPath, it will auto-resolve the differences:

Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(path1, from1to2)));
Console.WriteLine(Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(path2, from2to1)));

Output:

C:\dev\src\
C:\dev\src\release\Frontend\