Can you call Directory.GetFiles() with multiple fi

Question

I am trying to use the Directory.GetFiles() method to retrieve a list of files of multiple types, such as mp3's and jpg's. I have tried both of the following with no luck:

Directory.GetFiles("C:\\path", "*.mp3|*.jpg", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
Directory.GetFiles("C:\\path", "*.mp3;*.jpg", SearchOption.AllDirectories);

Is there a way to do this in one call?

Answer 1

Nope. Try the following:

List<string> _searchPatternList = new List<string>();
    ...
    List<string> fileList = new List<string>();
    foreach ( string ext in _searchPatternList )
    {
        foreach ( string subFile in Directory.GetFiles( folderName, ext  )
        {
            fileList.Add( subFile );
        }
    }

    // Sort alpabetically
    fileList.Sort();

    // Add files to the file browser control    
    foreach ( string fileName in fileList )
    {
        ...;
    }

Taken from: http://blogs.msdn.com/markda/archive/2006/04/20/580075.aspx

Answer 2

Just found an another way to do it. Still not one operation, but throwing it out to see what other people think about it.

private void getFiles(string path)
{
    foreach (string s in Array.FindAll(Directory.GetFiles(path, "*", SearchOption.AllDirectories), predicate_FileMatch))
    {
        Debug.Print(s);
    }
}

private bool predicate_FileMatch(string fileName)
{
    if (fileName.EndsWith(".mp3"))
        return true;
    if (fileName.EndsWith(".jpg"))
        return true;
    return false;
}

Answer 3

DirectoryInfo directory = new DirectoryInfo(Server.MapPath("~/Contents/"));

//Using Union

FileInfo[] files = directory.GetFiles("*.xlsx")
                            .Union(directory
                            .GetFiles("*.csv"))
                            .ToArray();

Answer 4

Or you can just convert the string of extensions to String^

vector <string>  extensions = { "*.mp4", "*.avi", "*.flv" };
for (int i = 0; i < extensions.size(); ++i)
{
     String^ ext = gcnew String(extensions[i].c_str());;
     String^ path = "C:\\Users\\Eric\\Videos";
     array<String^>^files = Directory::GetFiles(path,ext);
     Console::WriteLine(ext);
     cout << " " << (files->Length) << endl;
}

Answer 5

Let

var set = new HashSet<string> { ".mp3", ".jpg" };

Then

Directory.GetFiles(path, "*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories)
         .Where(f => set.Contains(
             new FileInfo(f).Extension,
             StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase));

or

from file in Directory.GetFiles(path, "*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories)
from ext in set
where String.Equals(ext, new FileInfo(file).Extension, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
select file;

Answer 6

There is also a descent solution which seems not to have any memory or performance overhead and be quite elegant:

string[] filters = new[]{"*.jpg", "*.png", "*.gif"};
string[] filePaths = filters.SelectMany(f => Directory.GetFiles(basePath, f)).ToArray();