Check whether a path is valid

Question

I am just wondering: I am looking for a way to validate if a given path is valid. (Note: I do not want to check if a file is existing! I only want to proof the validity of the path - So if a file could possibly exists at the location).

Problem is, I can't find anything in the .Net API. Due to the many formats and locations that Windows supports, I'd rather use something MS-native.

Since the function should be able to check against:

• Relative Paths (./)
• Absolute Paths (c:\tmp)
• UNC-Pathes (\some-pc\c$)
• NTFS-Limitations like the full path 1024 chars - If I am not mistaken exceeding the path will make a file inaccessible for many internal Windows functions. Renaming it with Explorer still works
• Volume GUID Paths : "\?\Volume{GUID}\somefile.foo

Does anyone have a function like this?

Answer 1

Try Uri.IsWellFormedUriString():

• The string is not correctly escaped.

  http://www.example.com/path???/file name
  

• The string is an absolute Uri that represents an implicit file Uri.

  c:\\directory\filename
  

• The string is an absolute URI that is missing a slash before the path.

  file://c:/directory/filename
  

• The string contains unescaped backslashes even if they are treated as forward slashes.

  http:\\host/path/file
  

• The string represents a hierarchical absolute Uri and does not contain "://".

  www.example.com/path/file
  

• The parser for the Uri.Scheme indicates that the original string was not well-formed.

  The example depends on the scheme of the URI.