searching for files

[ChrisHunter]

Hi,

At the moment i'm trying to locate xml files to use their content. I would like to be able find all files that have a particular pattern in their name (for example student_James.xml; student_Chris.xml so "student" would be the pattern). I want to be able to do this using a drive that is selected from a comboBox (i've figured out how to get a list of all possivle drives).

As only the drive and name pattern is known (not the full directort), i want to be able to locate the files using only the drive and the name pattern.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Chris

[lolafuertes]

Every drive has a root folder know as "\".
So starting at drive letter to search and root dir (IE: "F:\") you can use this to obtain a System.IO.DirectoryInfo

var RootDir = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo("F:\\")

Just be aware that you need to specify a doube backslash in order to be interpreted a s a single one.

At this point the root dir directoy info has a very useful function EnumerateFiles that, with the second parameter SearchOption.AllDirectories will do the trick.

Hope this helps.

[gusano79]

Another useful method that only requires one line is Directory.GetFiles :

string[] matchingFiles = Directory.GetFiles("F:\\", "student_*.xml", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

var RootDir = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo("F:\\")

Just be aware that you need to specify a doube backslash in order to be interpreted a s a single one.

I recommend using @-style string literal for the search path in this case, as it results in code that in my opinion is a little clearer and easier to read:

string[] matchingFiles = Directory.GetFiles(@"F:\", "student_*.xml", SearchOption.AllDirectories);