How to read existing text files without defining path

Question

Most of the examples shows how to read text file from exact location  f e   C  Users Owner Documents test1 txt    But  how to read text files without writing full path  so my code would work when copied to other computers  With visual studio I added 2 text files to project  console project  and don t know best way to read those files  Hope I described my problem clearly  Maybe I needed to add those txt files differentely  like directly to same folder as  exe file

User · Answer

When you provide a path  it can be absolute rooted  or relative   If you provide a relative path  it will be resolved by taking the working directory of the running process   Example   string text   File ReadAllText  Some  Path txt       relative path   The above code has the same effect as the following   string text   File ReadAllText      Path Combine Environment CurrentDirectory   Some  Path txt       If you have files that are always going to be in the same location relative to your application  just include a relative path to them  and they should resolve correctly on different computers

User · Answer

There are many ways to get a path  See CurrentDirrectory mentioned  Also  you can get the full file name of your application by using      Assembly GetExecutingAssembly   Location and then use Path class to get a directory name

User · Answer

You absolutely need to know where the files to be read can be located  However  this information can be relative of course so it may be well adapted to other systems   So it could relate to the current directory  get it from Directory GetCurrentDirectory    or to the application executable path  eg  Application ExecutablePath comes to mind if using Windows Forms or via Assembly GetEntryAssembly   Location  or to some special Windows directory like  Documents and Settings   you should use Environment GetFolderPath   with one element of the Environment SpecialFolder enumeration    Note that the  current directory  and the path of the executable are not necessarily identical  You need to know where to look   In either case  if you need to manipulate a path use the Path class to split or combine parts of the path

User · Answer

This will load a file in working directory           static void Main string   args                        string fileName   System IO Path GetFullPath Directory GetCurrentDirectory        Yourfile txt                 Console WriteLine  Your file content is                 using  StreamReader sr   File OpenText fileName                                 string s                       while   s   sr ReadLine       null                                        Console WriteLine s                                                Console ReadKey                If your using console you can also do this It will prompt the user to write the path of the file including filename with extension            static void Main string   args                         Console WriteLine      please enter path to your file                    Console Write  Path                  string pth   Console ReadLine                Console WriteLine                Console WriteLine  Your file content is                 using  StreamReader sr   File OpenText pth                                 string s                       while   s   sr ReadLine       null                                        Console WriteLine s                                                Console ReadKey                If you use winforms for example try this simple example           private void button1 Click object sender  EventArgs e                        string pth                   OpenFileDialog ofd   new OpenFileDialog                 if  ofd ShowDialog      DialogResult OK                                pth   ofd FileName                  textBox1 Text   File ReadAllText pth

User · Answer

You could use Directory GetCurrentDirectory   var path   Path Combine Directory GetCurrentDirectory       fileName txt      Which will look for the file fileName txt in the current directory of the application

User · Answer

You need to decide which directory you want the file to be relative to  Once you have done that  you construct the full path like this   string fullPathToFile   Path Combine dir  fileName     If you don t supply the base directory dir then you will be at the total mercy of whatever happens to the working directory of your process  That is something that can be out of your control  For example  shortcuts to your application may specify it  Using file dialogs can change it   For a console application it is reasonable to use relative files directly because console applications are designed so that the working directory is a critical input and is a well-defined part of the execution environment  However  for a GUI app that is not the case which is why I recommend you explicitly convert your relative file name to a full absolute path using some well-defined base directory   Now  since you have a console application  it is reasonable for you to use a relative path  provided that the expectation is that the files in question will be located in the working directory  But it would be very common for that not to be the case  Normally the working directory is used to specify where the user s input and output files are to be stored  It does not typically point to the location where the program s files are   One final option is that you don t attempt to deploy these program files as external text files  Perhaps a better option is to link them to the executable as resources  That way they are bound up with the executable and you can completely side-step this issue

User · Answer

As your project is a console project you can pass the path to the text files that you want to read via the string   args  static void Main string   args        Within Main you can check if arguments are passed  if  args Length    0   System Console WriteLine  Please enter a parameter       Extract an argument  string fileToRead   args 0     Nearly all languages support the concept of argument passing and follow similar patterns to C    For more C  specific see http   msdn microsoft com en-us library vstudio cb20e19t aspx

User · Answer

If your application is a web service  Directory CurrentDirectory doesn t work     Use System IO Path Combine System AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory   yourFileName txt    instead

[c#] How to read existing text files without defining path

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