How to: Determine the Absolute Path of a File in Visual Basic

The My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFileInfo Method returns a FileInfo object that can be used to determine information about a file, including its location, which is contained in the FullName property.

If a file does not exist, GetFileInfo does not throw an exception, but one is thrown the first time a property on the System.IO.FileInfo object is accessed.

Procedure

To determine the absolute path of a file

• Use the GetFileInfo method to return a FileInfo object for the file you wish to examine. The FullName property contains the absolute path. The following example determines the absolute path of Test.txt and displays it in a message box.

  Dim getInfo As System.IO.FileInfo
  getInfo = My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFileInfo("C:\TestFolder1\test.txt")
  MsgBox(getInfo.FullName)
  

Robust Programming

The following conditions may cause an exception:

• The path name is malformed. For example, it contains invalid characters or is only white space (ArgumentException).

• The file does not exist or is Nothing (ArgumentNullException).

• The path contains a colon in the middle of the string (NotSupportedException).

• The path is too long (PathTooLongException).

• The user lacks necessary permissions (SecurityException).

• The user lacks ACL (access control list) access to the file (UnauthorizedAccessException).

See Also

Tasks

How to: Parse File Paths in Visual Basic

Reference

My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFileInfo Method

FileInfo