Question

We use absolut path or relatvie path to find a file in our C# application right now. Is there a way to find the file just by its name if the file is under the currect working directory or under one of the “paths”?

Use absolute pathe is not good and use relative path is not good enough because we may change project structure by rename or move project folders. If we our code can automatically search current working directory, its subfolders and search system path, that will be more flexible.

thanks,

Answer 1

Try this:

string target = "yourFilenameToMatch";
string current = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();

// 1. check subtree from current directory
matches=Directory.GetFiles(current, target, SearchOption.AllDirectories);
if (matches.Length>0)
    return matches[0];

// 2. check system path
string systemPath = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PATH");
char[] split = new char[] {";"};
foreach (string nextDir in systemPath.Split(split))
{
    if (File.Exists(nextDir + '\\' + target)
    {
        return nextDir;
    }
}

return String.Empty;