Path.GetFullPath Method

Definition

Returns the absolute path for the specified path string.

public static string GetFullPath (string path);
Parameters
path
String

The file or directory for which to obtain absolute path information.

Returns

The fully qualified location of path, such as "C:\MyFile.txt".

Exceptions

path is a zero-length string, contains only white space, or contains one or more of the invalid characters defined in GetInvalidPathChars().

-or-

The system could not retrieve the absolute path.

The caller does not have the required permissions.

path is null.

path contains a colon (":") that is not part of a volume identifier (for example, "c:\").

The specified path, file name, or both exceed the system-defined maximum length. For example, on Windows-based platforms, paths must be less than 248 characters, and file names must be less than 260 characters.

Examples

The following code example demonstrates the GetFullPath method on a Windows-based desktop platform.

String^ fileName = "myfile.ext";
String^ path = "\\mydir\\";
String^ fullPath;
fullPath = Path::GetFullPath( path );
Console::WriteLine( "GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", path, fullPath );
fullPath = Path::GetFullPath( fileName );
Console::WriteLine( "GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", fileName, fullPath );

// Output is based on your current directory, except
// in the last case, where it is based on the root drive
// GetFullPath('mydir') returns 'C:\temp\Demo\mydir'
// GetFullPath('myfile.ext') returns 'C:\temp\Demo\myfile.ext'
// GetFullPath('\mydir') returns 'C:\mydir'
string fileName = "myfile.ext";
string path1 = @"mydir";
string path2 = @"\mydir";
string fullPath;

fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(path1);
Console.WriteLine("GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", 
    path1, fullPath);

fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(fileName);
Console.WriteLine("GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", 
    fileName, fullPath);

fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(path2);
Console.WriteLine("GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", 
    path2, fullPath);

// Output is based on your current directory, except
// in the last case, where it is based on the root drive
// GetFullPath('mydir') returns 'C:\temp\Demo\mydir'
// GetFullPath('myfile.ext') returns 'C:\temp\Demo\myfile.ext'
// GetFullPath('\mydir') returns 'C:\mydir'
Dim fileName As string = "myfile.ext"
Dim path1 As string = "mydir"
Dim path2 As string = "\mydir"
Dim fullPath As string

fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(path1)
Console.WriteLine("GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", _
    path1, fullPath)

fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(fileName)
Console.WriteLine("GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", _
    fileName, fullPath)

fullPath = Path.GetFullPath(path2)
Console.WriteLine("GetFullPath('{0}') returns '{1}'", _
    path2, fullPath)

' Output is based on your current directory, except
' in the last case, where it is based on the root drive
' GetFullPath('mydir') returns 'C:\temp\Demo\mydir'
' GetFullPath('myfile.ext') returns 'C:\temp\Demo\myfile.ext'
' GetFullPath('\mydir') returns 'C:\mydir'

Remarks

The .NET Framework does not support direct access to physical disks through paths that are device names, such as "\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE0 ".

The absolute path includes all information required to locate a file or directory on a system.

The file or directory specified by path is not required to exist. For example, if c:\temp\newdir is the current directory, calling GetFullPath on a file name such as test.txt returns c:\temp\newdir\test.txt. The file need not exist.

However, if path does exist, the caller must have permission to obtain path information for path. Note that unlike most members of the Path class, this method accesses the file system.

This method uses current directory and current volume information to fully qualify path. If you specify a file name only in path, GetFullPath returns the fully qualified path of the current directory.

If you pass in a short file name, it is expanded to a long file name.

If a path contains no significant characters it is invalid unless it contains one or more "." characters followed by any number of spaces, then it will be parsed as either "." or "..".

For a list of common I/O tasks, see Common I/O Tasks.