Full directory listing in C#

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How can I perform full recursive directory & file scan?

I can't find any informations, how to create a full directory listing in C#, including all files inside and all its subfolders's files, i.e:

c:\a.jpg
c:\b.php
c:\c\d.exe
c:\e\f.png
c:\g\h.mpg

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.directoryinfo.aspx — Mihai Todor, May 30 '12 at 21:03

Reed Copsey · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-30T21:09:33.693

6

You can use DirectoryInfo.GetFiles("C:\*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

This will return an array of FileInfo objects, which include a Name and FullName property for the filename.

That being said, I would not do this on "C:\", as you'll return a huge array, but this technique will work correctly on an appropriate folder.

If you're using .NET 4, I'd recommend using EnumerateFiles instead, which will return an IEnumerable<T> instead of an array.

Note that the above code will most likely fail, however, as it requires full permissions to search the file system. A SecurityException will be raised if you can't access specific parts of the file system you're trying to search.

Also - if you're only interested in the file names and not the full FileInfo information, you can use Directory.EnumerateFiles instead, which returns an IEnumerable<string> with all of the relevant filenames.

edited May 30 '12 at 21:09

answered May 30 '12 at 21:04

Reed Copsey

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2

That's going to return a gigantic array... – Kirk Woll May 30 '12 at 21:04
@Kirk Woll Let's hope that he doesn't actually plan to keep those files directly on C:\ :) – Mihai Todor May 30 '12 at 21:05
1

I'm hoping that "C:\\" isn't the search string here, and was just used as an example... – Reed Copsey May 30 '12 at 21:07

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 30 '12 at 21:07

There is an MSDN Article with code examples to do just this.

This is the money:

void DirSearch(string sDir) 
{
    try 
    {
        foreach (string d in Directory.GetDirectories(sDir)) 
        {
            foreach (string f in Directory.GetFiles(d, txtFile.Text)) 
            {
                lstFilesFound.Items.Add(f);
            }
            DirSearch(d);
        }
    }
    catch (System.Exception excpt) 
    {
        Console.WriteLine(excpt.Message);
    }
}

Full directory listing in C#

2 Answers2