CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#directoryfilesystems
Masoud Abasian
Masoud Abasian

Reputation: 10899

How do I find the parent directory in C#?

I use this code for finding the debug directory

public string str_directory = Environment.CurrentDirectory.ToString();

"C:\\Users\\Masoud\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2008\\Projects\\MyProj\\MyProj\\bin\\Debug"

How can I find the parent folder as shown below?

"C:\\Users\\Masoud\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2008\\Projects\\MyProj\\MyProj"

Upvotes: 126

Views: 213750

Answers (17)

Vadim Chuprakov
Vadim Chuprakov

Reputation: 51

  public static string simple_parent_path(string path)
  {
    var last_split = -1;

    for (var index = path.Length - 1; index >= 0; --index)
    {
      if (path[index] is not ('\\' or '/'))
        continue;
      last_split = index;
      break;
    }

    return last_split != -1
      ? path[..last_split]
      : string.Empty;
  }

This approach for me more usefull than Directory.GetParent because for some reason Directory.GetParent returns full path to parent (I don't want that).

Upvotes: 0

Timo
Timo

Reputation: 8680

Edit: The normalization covered in this answer only happens when the path is used to access the file system, but not on the string itself. By contrast, the answer here achieves the result and normalization purely using path strings, without using the file system at all.

I've found variants of System.IO.Path.Combine(myPath, "..") to be the easiest and most reliable. Even more so if what northben says is true, that GetParent requires an extra call if there is a trailing slash. That, to me, is unreliable.

Path.Combine makes sure you never go wrong with slashes.

.. behaves exactly like it does everywhere else in Windows. You can add any number of \.. to a path in cmd or explorer and it will behave exactly as I describe below.

Some basic .. behavior:

  1. If there is a file name, .. will chop that off:

Path.Combine(@"D:\Grandparent\Parent\Child.txt", "..") => D:\Grandparent\Parent\

  1. If the path is a directory, .. will move up a level:

Path.Combine(@"D:\Grandparent\Parent\", "..") => D:\Grandparent\

  1. ..\.. follows the same rules, twice in a row:

Path.Combine(@"D:\Grandparent\Parent\Child.txt", @"..\..") => D:\Grandparent\ Path.Combine(@"D:\Grandparent\Parent\", @"..\..") => D:\

  1. And this has the exact same effect:

Path.Combine(@"D:\Grandparent\Parent\Child.txt", "..", "..") => D:\Grandparent\ Path.Combine(@"D:\Grandparent\Parent\", "..", "..") => D:\

Upvotes: 32

Zahari Kitanov
Zahari Kitanov

Reputation: 578

In my case I am using .NET 6. When I use:

public string str_directory = Environment.CurrentDirectory.ToString();

returns C:\Projects\MyTestProject\bin\Debug\net6.0

In order to reach C:\Projects\MyTestProject I am using the following:

Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).Parent.Parent

You can chain Parent to Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory) in order to reach the directory you want.

Final version:

public string str_directory = Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).Parent.Parent.ToString();

Upvotes: 2

Timo
Timo

Reputation: 8680

Since nothing else I have found helps to solve this in a truly normalized way, here is another answer.

Note that some answers to similar questions try to use the Uri type, but that struggles with trailing slashes vs. no trailing slashes too.

My other answer on this page works for operations that put the file system to work, but if we want to have the resolved path right now (such as for comparison reasons), without going through the file system, C:/Temp/.. and C:/ would be considered different. Without going through the file system, navigating in that manner does not provide us with a normalized, properly comparable path.

What can we do?

We will build on the following discovery:

Path.GetDirectoryName(path + "/") ?? "" will reliably give us a directory path without a trailing slash.

  • Adding a slash (as string, not as char) will treat a null path the same as it treats "".
  • GetDirectoryName will refrain from discarding the last path component thanks to the added slash.
  • GetDirectoryName will normalize slashes and navigational dots.
  • This includes the removal of any trailing slashes.
  • This includes collapsing .. by navigating up.
  • GetDirectoryName will return null for an empty path, which we coalesce to "".

How do we use this?

First, normalize the input path:

dirPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(dirPath + "/") ?? ""; // To handle nulls, we append "/" rather than '/'

Then, we can get the parent directory, and we can repeat this operation any number of times to navigate further up:

// This is reliable if path results from this or the previous operation
path = Path.GetDirectoryName(path);

Note that we have never touched the file system. No part of the path needs to exist, as it would if we had used DirectoryInfo.

Upvotes: 4

Sylence
Sylence

Reputation: 3073

You can use System.IO.Directory.GetParent() to retrieve the parent directory of a given directory.

Upvotes: 170

Madivad
Madivad

Reputation: 3337

No one has provided a solution that would work cross-form. I know it wasn't specifically asked but I am working in a linux environment where most of the solutions (as at the time I post this) would provide an error.

Hardcoding path separators (as well as other things) will give an error in anything but Windows systems.

In my original solution I used:

char filesep = Path.DirectorySeparatorChar;
string datapath = $"..{filesep}..{filesep}";

However after seeing some of the answers here I adjusted it to be:

string datapath = Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory()).FullName).FullName;

Upvotes: 6

Hogan
Hogan

Reputation: 70513

This is the most common way -- it really depends on what you are doing exactly: (To explain, the example below will remove the last 10 characters which is what you asked for, however if there are some business rules that are driving your need to find a specific location you should use those to retrieve the directory location, not find the location of something else and modify it.)

// remove last 10 characters from a string
str_directory = str_directory.Substring(0,str_directory.Length-10);

Upvotes: 2

Siby Sunny
Siby Sunny

Reputation: 742

To get your solution try this 

string directory = System.IO.Directory.GetParent(System.IO.Directory.GetParent(Environment.CurrentDirectory).ToString()).ToString();

Upvotes: 1

A.D.
A.D.

Reputation: 1116

To avoid issues with trailing \, call it this way:

  string ParentFolder =  Directory.GetParent( folder.Trim('\\')).FullName;

Upvotes: 3

Slai
Slai

Reputation: 22876

IO.Path.GetFullPath(@"..\..")

If you clear the "bin\Debug\" in the Project properties -> Build -> Output path, then you can just use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory

Upvotes: 4

Carl Walsh
Carl Walsh

Reputation: 6949

Directory.GetParent is probably a better answer, but for completeness there's a different method that takes string and returns string: Path.GetDirectoryName.

string parent = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(str_directory);

Upvotes: 15

Pierre-Alain Vigeant
Pierre-Alain Vigeant

Reputation: 23083

If you append ..\.. to your existing path, the operating system will correctly browse the grand-parent folder.

That should do the job:

System.IO.Path.Combine("C:\\Users\\Masoud\\Documents\\Visual Studio 2008\\Projects\\MyProj\\MyProj\\bin\\Debug", @"..\..");

If you browse that path, you will browse the grand-parent directory.

Upvotes: 49

billinkc
billinkc

Reputation: 61201

string parent = System.IO.Directory.GetParent(str_directory).FullName;

See BOL

Upvotes: 59

musefan
musefan

Reputation: 48415

You shouldn't try to do that. Environment.CurrentDirectory gives you the path of the executable directory. This is consistent regardless of where the .exe file is. You shouldn't try to access a file that is assumed to be in a backwards relative location

I would suggest you move whatever resource you want to access into a local location. Of a system directory (such as AppData)

Upvotes: 1

Michael Ames
Michael Ames

Reputation: 2617

Like this:

System.IO.DirectoryInfo myDirectory = new DirectoryInfo(Environment.CurrentDirectory);
string parentDirectory = myDirectory.Parent.FullName;

Good luck!

Upvotes: 7

Jay Riggs
Jay Riggs

Reputation: 53595

To get a 'grandparent' directory, call Directory.GetParent() twice:

var gparent = Directory.GetParent(Directory.GetParent(str_directory).ToString());

Upvotes: 11

ravuya
ravuya

Reputation: 8756

You might want to look into the DirectoryInfo.Parent property.

Upvotes: 6

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