Alex Rivera | Logout

How to list all subdirectories in a directory

Asked 2011-09-04T01:52:34.863
109

I'm working on a project and I need to list all subdirectories in a directory. For example, how could I list all the subdirectories in drive C:?

Edit
Report

1 Answer

189

Use Directory.GetDirectories to get the subdirectories of the directory specified by "your_directory_path". The result is an array of strings.

var directories = Directory.GetDirectories("your_directory_path");

By default, that only returns subdirectories one level deep. There are options to return all recursively and to filter the results, documented here, and shown in Clive's answer.


Avoiding an UnauthorizedAccessException

It's easily possible that you'll get an UnauthorizedAccessException if you hit a directory to which you don't have access.

You may have to create your own method that handles the exception, like this:

public class CustomSearcher
{ 
    public static List<string> GetDirectories(string path, string searchPattern = "*",
        SearchOption searchOption = SearchOption.AllDirectories)
    {
        if (searchOption == SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly)
            return Directory.GetDirectories(path, searchPattern).ToList();

        var directories = new List<string>(GetDirectories(path, searchPattern));

        for (var i = 0; i < directories.Count; i++)
            directories.AddRange(GetDirectories(directories[i], searchPattern));

        return directories;
    }

    private static List<string> GetDirectories(string path, string searchPattern)
    {
        try
        {
            return Directory.GetDirectories(path, searchPattern).ToList();
        }
        catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
        {
            return new List<string>();
        }
    }
}

And then call it like this:

var directories = CustomSearcher.GetDirectories("your_directory_path");

                        
                        
answered 2011-09-04T01:55:37.363

Your Answer