Absolute Path from Relative Path with a different current folder

Question

I need to get an absolute path from a relative path, but using a folder other than where the assembly is executing from to resolve "." and "..". Path.GetFullPath does not provide such an overload.

For example, say I have the following path:

..\MyOtherFolder\foo.bar

And the folder the assembly is executing from is:

c:\users\me\desktop\source\myproj\bin\debug\

but it could, in practice, be located anywhere.

I want to specify the "current" folder as c:\test so the ".." resolves to "c:\".

Does anyone know if this is built into the .NET framework anywhere? If not, I plan on making a Utility method, but I thought I'd check first (especially since there's no static extension methods...).

EDIT:

Path.Combine will not work. All this method essentially does is concatenate the two strings.

Possible duplicate [how to convert relative path to absolute path in windows application?](http://stackoverflow.com/q/1399008/299327). — Ryan Gates, Dec 10 '12 at 22:27

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 10 '12 at 21:32

8

Have you tried

Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine(@"C:\test", @"..\MyOtherFolder\foo.bar"))

That should do the trick.

answered Dec 10 '12 at 21:32

Marcus

5,987
3
27
40

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 10 '12 at 21:55

public string FullPathRelativeTo(string root, string partialPath)
{
    string oldRoot = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
    try {
        Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(root);
        return Path.GetFullPath(partialPath);
    }
    finally {
        Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(oldRoot);
    }
}

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 30 '15 at 07:41

4

If you're currently in c:\test and you want to get c:\MyOtherFolder\foo.bar without knowing that you're in c:\test you want to do;

 Environment.CurrentDirectory = @"..\MyOtherFolder"; //navigation accepts relative path
 string fullPath = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(); // returns full path

After that you may want to set the current directory back to your previous location.

edited Aug 30 '15 at 07:41

Dmitry Pavliv

35,333
13
79
80

answered Dec 10 '12 at 21:39

evanmcdonnal

46,131
16
104
115

Although changing the current directory is not really ideal (in a Utility method it is non-obvious that its not thread-safe), this works for my current purposes. – MgSam Dec 10 '12 at 21:58
This hurts me physically... :( – Mateen Ulhaq Apr 22 '16 at 18:12

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 25 '14 at 00:47

3

You can do

new DirectoryInfo( @"..\MyOtherFolder\foo.bar" ).FullName

answered Jan 25 '14 at 00:47

Fernando Gonzalez Sanchez

3,315
4
32
45

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 10 '12 at 21:31

2

Try to use Path.Combine(...) method, it has to help you to achieve what you want..

answered Dec 10 '12 at 21:31

Tigran

61,654
8
86
123

1

I get the impression the OP is assuming he doesn't know that he's in `c:\tests`, he could be anywhere, and wants to get a full path given a relative path so `Path.Combine` will not work. – evanmcdonnal Dec 10 '12 at 21:36

Absolute Path from Relative Path with a different current folder

5 Answers5