How to replace double back slashes returned by AppContext.BaseDirectory in C#

Question

I'm trying to replace the double backward slashes returned by AppContext.BaseDirectory with only one backward slash. I attempted to replace the double slashes using the code snippet below, but it didn't work as expected. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks!

C:\\Users\BGates\\Databases\\ProductionDatabase\\Company.db

string fileName= "Combany.db";
string path= Path.Combine(Global.Directory,fileName).Replace("\\","\");

Answer 1

The character‘\’is a special character.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-language/escape-sequences?view=msvc-170

During debugging, it is displayed as “C:\\Users\\BGates\\Databases\\ProductionDatabase\\Company.db”, but the actual content is “C:\Users\BGates\Databases\ProductionDatabase\Company.db”.

When looking at the contents of a string during debugging, it is good to use the Text Visualizer.

Answer 2

Hi @Tom Meier , Welcome to Microsoft Q&A,

To replace double backslashes with single backslashes, you can use the Replace method. The problem you are encountering may be because the backslash in the string is an escape character, so you need to be careful when replacing it. The following is a correct code example:

string fileName = "Company.db";
string path = Path.Combine(Global.Directory, fileName).Replace("\\\\", "\\");

In this example, Replace("\\\\", "\\") will replace all double backslashes with single backslashes. Note that in C#, the backslash is an escape character, so you need to use two backslashes to represent an actual backslash.

Alternatively, you can use a verbatim string to avoid the escape character issue, as shown below:

string fileName = "Company.db";
string path = Path.Combine(Global.Directory, fileName).Replace(@"\\", @"\");

This will ensure that all double backslashes in the path are replaced with single backslashes.

Best Regards,

Jiale

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