Question

What’s the best way, using C# or other .NET language, to determine if a file path string is on the local machine or a remote server?

It’s possible to determine if a path string is UNC using the following:

new Uri(path).IsUnc 

That works great for paths that start with C:\ or other drive letter, but what about paths like:

\\machinename\sharename\directory \\10.12.34.56\sharename\directory 

…where both refer to the local machine – these are UNC paths but are still local.

Answer 1

Don’t know if there’s a more efficient way of doing this, but it seems to work for me:

    IPAddress[] host;     IPAddress[] local;     bool isLocal = false;      host = Dns.GetHostAddresses(uri.Host);     local = Dns.GetHostAddresses(Dns.GetHostName());      foreach (IPAddress hostAddress in host)     {         if (IPAddress.IsLoopback(hostAddress))         {             isLocal = true;             break;         }         else         {             foreach (IPAddress localAddress in local)             {                 if (hostAddress.Equals(localAddress))                 {                     isLocal = true;                     break;                 }             }              if (isLocal)             {                 break;             }         }     }