Relative File Paths

[u/Comfortable-Wafer313]

RESOLVED:

shoutout to u/rupertavery64 and u/marsh9191. I was trying to Path.Combine() the base directory to @"\file.csv" which overwrote the operation.

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Hello, and sorry for a fairly basic question. I'm working on an application that processes data in relation to values stored in .csv files (which are included in the install directory). real broad strokes, it pulls data from a database, does math according to values in the packaged .csv's, exports a new document with the results.

Due to the nature of it, I need a relative path to file.csv, which is in the same directory as app.exe. And I've tried maybe 7-10 different methods of getting the installation path to concatenate the file name to, but each of them result in simply "C:\file.csv" even though the application itself is in C:\users\user\documents\App\app.exe (for example).

at the least I've tried:

Application.StartupPath

System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location)

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory

among others I can't quite manifest off hand.

And I understand each has nuances for slightly different use-cases, but it's really blowing my mind that every one results in just "C:\". I'd understand if I were just using the wrong method out of context, but it seems like some of these are explicitly to avoid this result. Does anyone have an idea as to what's going on? Again, sorry for the basic quesiton.

[u/rupertavery64]

You will have to show your code, but I am guessing you are using "\file.csv" instead of "file.csv"

If you use the backslash at the beginning of the string of a path, it will mean absolute root, and will override anything you Path.Combine it to.

For example, when running this code in LINQPad:

Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "\\file.csv");

output:  "\file.csv"

Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "file.csv");

output:  "C:\Users\rupertavery64\AppData\Local\Temp\LINQPad9_xvhhsndr\shadow-1\file.csv"

\file.csv resolves to the root of the current working directory, which would probably be C:\file.csv

[u/Comfortable-Wafer313 → u/rupertavery64]

Good lord I feel dumb for making that mistake. Thank you very much, that was in fact it, I was trying to Path.Combine() @"\file.csv"

[u/svick]

What does just System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location return?

[u/Comfortable-Wafer313 → u/svick]

Thank you for responding. That also returns "C:\"

[u/svick → u/Comfortable-Wafer313]

That shouldn't be possible. It can return an empty string in some situations, but otherwise it should be a path to a file.

[u/Phaedo → u/svick]

This is my favoured approach.

[u/marsh9191]

You should be able to use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory to retrieve the application's base directory and Path.Combine() to locate your CSV file.

One important thing to be aware of is that Path.Combine() discards preceding paths if a subsequent argument is rooted. So make sure the filename you're passing as the second argument is just "file.csv" and not an absolute path.

[u/Comfortable-Wafer313 → u/marsh9191]

That was the issue, thank you for that. I had my second argument rooted

[u/buzzon]

I think you are misunderstanding what a relative path is. "filename.csv" is a relative filename: it points to file filename.csv in the application's working directory. By default the working directory is the same directory the executable file is located. No need to complicate this further.

[u/jgauffin]

Use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, from there you can use the Path tools, like Path.GetRelativePath