Getting all file names from a folder using C#

Question

I wanted to know if it is possible to get all the names of text files in a certain folder.

For example, I have a folder with the name Maps, and I would like to get the names of all the text files in that folder and add it to a list of strings.

Is it possible, and if so, how I can achieve this?

score 465 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 25 '21 at 03:12

465

using System.IO;

DirectoryInfo d = new DirectoryInfo(@"D:\Test"); //Assuming Test is your Folder

FileInfo[] Files = d.GetFiles("*.txt"); //Getting Text files
string str = "";

foreach(FileInfo file in Files )
{
  str = str + ", " + file.Name;
}

edited Dec 25 '21 at 03:12

Halo

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answered Feb 14 '13 at 14:43

Gopesh Sharma

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Using System.IO; – Jeff Sep 11 '14 at 13:20
13

FileInfo has a lot of overhead, it would be much better to use Path.GetFileName(filePath) – Jared Wadsworth Dec 04 '14 at 22:59
1

How does `DirectoryInfo` and `FileInfo` compare to the `Directory.GetFiles` approach? – Aaron Franke Dec 06 '18 at 22:17
1

@Jeff Please be under some answers, where it's not obvious which namespaces are used :D Thx. – arsdever Mar 26 '21 at 12:01

score 207 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 16 '18 at 12:33

207

using System.IO; //add this namespace also

string[] filePaths = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\Maps\", "*.txt",
                                         SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);

edited Feb 16 '18 at 12:33

Hammad Sajid

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answered Feb 14 '13 at 14:41

Avitus

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How does `Directory.GetFiles` compare to the `DirectoryInfo` and `FileInfo` approach? – Aaron Franke Dec 06 '18 at 22:16
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@AaronFranke `Directory.GetFiles` will give you an array of fullpaths of the files contained in the Directory, whereas the `DirectoryInfo` approach will give you an array of `FileInfo`, which contains more info about each file, such as filename, extension, size, modified time, etc. – Pona Dec 16 '18 at 19:29

score 88 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 14 '13 at 15:32

It depends on what you want to do.

ref: http://www.csharp-examples.net/get-files-from-directory/

This will bring back ALL the files in the specified directory

string[] fileArray = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\Dir\");

This will bring back ALL the files in the specified directory with a certain extension

string[] fileArray = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\Dir\", "*.jpg");

This will bring back ALL the files in the specified directory AS WELL AS all subdirectories with a certain extension

string[] fileArray = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\Dir\", "*.jpg", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

Hope this helps

rerun · Answer 4 · 2018-12-11T17:51:41.700

17

Does exactly what you want.

System.IO.Directory.GetFiles

edited Dec 11 '18 at 17:51

answered Feb 14 '13 at 14:41

rerun

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`IO` is capitalized. – Aaron Franke Dec 07 '18 at 04:08
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Around here we discourage simply linking to the manual. Next time you should also paste in the relevant information with your answer here. – Alpants Nov 06 '19 at 15:27

score 8 · Answer 5 · edited May 16 '15 at 21:06

8

Take a look at Directory.GetFiles Method (String, String) (MSDN).

This method returns all the files as an array of filenames.

edited May 16 '15 at 21:06

Peter Mortensen

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answered Feb 14 '13 at 14:42

James Culshaw

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score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 14 '13 at 14:41

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.directory.getfiles.aspx

The System.IO namespace has loads of methods to help you with file operations. The

Directory.GetFiles()

method returns an array of strings which represent the files in the target directory.

score -10 · Answer 7 · edited May 16 '15 at 21:05

-10

I would recommend you google 'Read objects in folder'. You might need to create a reader and a list and let the reader read all the object names in the folder and add them to the list in n loops.

edited May 16 '15 at 21:05

Peter Mortensen

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answered Feb 14 '13 at 14:42

CompiledIO

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Much more efficient to use the inbuilt GetFiles method on the Directory class. – James Culshaw Feb 14 '13 at 14:44

Getting all file names from a folder using C#

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