How do I find the parent directory in C

Question

I use this code for finding the debug directory  public string str directory   Environment CurrentDirectory ToString       C   Users  Masoud  Documents  Visual Studio 2008  Projects  MyProj  MyProj  bin  Debug   How can I find the parent folder as shown below    C   Users  Masoud  Documents  Visual Studio 2008  Projects  MyProj  MyProj

User · Answer

To get a  grandparent  directory  call Directory GetParent   twice   var gparent   Directory GetParent Directory GetParent str directory  ToString

User · Answer

Since nothing else I have found helps to solve this in a truly normalized way  here is another answer  Note that some answers to similar questions try to use the Uri type  but that struggles with trailing slashes vs  no trailing slashes too  My other answer on this page works for operations that put the file system to work  but if we want to have the resolved path right now  such as for comparison reasons   without going through the file system  C  Temp    and C   would be considered different  Without going through the file system  navigating in that manner does not provide us with a normalized  properly comparable path  What can we do  We will build on the following discovery   Path GetDirectoryName path    quot   quot       quot  quot  will reliably give us a directory path without a trailing slash    Adding a slash  as string  not as char  will treat a null path the same as it treats  quot  quot   GetDirectoryName will refrain from discarding the last path component thanks to the added slash  GetDirectoryName will normalize slashes and navigational dots  This includes the removal of any trailing slashes  This includes collapsing    by navigating up  GetDirectoryName will return null for an empty path  which we coalesce to  quot  quot    How do we use this  First  normalize the input path  dirPath   Path GetDirectoryName dirPath    quot   quot       quot  quot    Then  we can get the parent directory  and we can repeat this operation any number of times to navigate further up     This is reliable if path results from this or the previous operation path   Path GetDirectoryName path    Note that we have never touched the file system  No part of the path needs to exist  as it would if we had used DirectoryInfo

User · Answer

No one has provided a solution that would work cross-form  I know it wasn t specifically asked but I am working in a linux environment where most of the solutions  as at the time I post this  would provide an error   Hardcoding path separators  as well as other things  will give an error in anything but Windows systems    In my original solution I used   char filesep   Path DirectorySeparatorChar  string datapath        filesep    filesep      However after seeing some of the answers here I adjusted it to be   string datapath   Directory GetParent Directory GetParent Directory GetCurrentDirectory    FullName  FullName

User · Answer

This is the most common way -- it really depends on what you are doing exactly   To explain  the example below will remove the last 10 characters which is what you asked for  however if there are some business rules that are driving your need to find a specific location you should use those to retrieve the directory location  not find the location of something else and modify it       remove last 10 characters from a string str directory   str directory Substring 0 str directory Length-10

User · Answer

To get your solution  try this   string directory   System IO Directory GetParent System IO Directory GetParent Environment CurrentDirectory  ToString    ToString

User · Answer

To avoid issues with trailing    call it this way     string ParentFolder    Directory GetParent  folder Trim        FullName

User · Answer

string parent   System IO Directory GetParent str directory  FullName    See BOL

User · Answer

IO Path GetFullPath             If you clear the  bin Debug   in the Project properties -  Build -  Output path  then you can just use AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory

User · Answer

You shouldn t try to do that  Environment CurrentDirectory gives you the path of the executable directory  This is consistent regardless of where the  exe file is  You shouldn t try to access a file that is assumed to be in a backwards relative location  I would suggest you move whatever resource you want to access into a local location  Of a system directory  such as AppData

User · Answer

Like this   System IO DirectoryInfo myDirectory   new DirectoryInfo Environment CurrentDirectory   string parentDirectory   myDirectory Parent FullName    Good luck

User · Answer

You might want to look into the DirectoryInfo Parent property

User · Answer

Directory GetParent is probably a better answer  but for completeness there s a different method that takes string and returns string  Path GetDirectoryName   string parent   System IO Path GetDirectoryName str directory

User · Answer

I ve found variants of System IO Path Combine myPath        to be the easiest and most reliable  Even more so if what northben says is true  that GetParent requires an extra call if there is a trailing slash  That  to me  is unreliable   Path Combine makes sure you never go wrong with slashes      behaves exactly like it does everywhere else in Windows  You can add any number of     to a path in cmd or explorer and it will behave exactly as I describe below   Some basic    behavior    If there is a file name     will chop that off    Path Combine   D  Grandparent Parent Child txt            D  Grandparent Parent    If the path is a directory     will move up a level    Path Combine   D  Grandparent Parent             D  Grandparent          follows the same rules  twice in a row    Path Combine   D  Grandparent Parent Child txt                D  Grandparent  Path Combine   D  Grandparent Parent                 D     And this has the exact same effect    Path Combine   D  Grandparent Parent Child txt                  D  Grandparent  Path Combine   D  Grandparent Parent                   D

User · Answer

If you append       to your existing path  the operating system will correctly browse the grand-parent folder   That should do the job   System IO Path Combine  C   Users  Masoud  Documents  Visual Studio 2008  Projects  MyProj  MyProj  bin  Debug                If you browse that path  you will browse the grand-parent directory

User · Answer

You can use System IO Directory GetParent   to retrieve the parent directory of a given directory

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