Directory.GetDirectoryRoot(String) Method

Definition

Returns the volume information, root information, or both for the specified path.

C#
public static string GetDirectoryRoot(string path);

Parameters

path
String

The path of a file or directory.

Returns

A string that contains the volume information, root information, or both for the specified path.

Exceptions

The caller does not have the required permission.

.NET Framework and .NET Core versions older than 2.1: path is a zero-length string, contains only white space, or contains one or more invalid characters. You can query for invalid characters with GetInvalidPathChars().

path is null.

The specified path, file name, or both exceed the system-defined maximum length.

Examples

The following example illustrates how to set the current directory and display the directory root.

C#
// This sample shows how to set the current directory and how to determine
// the root directory.
using System;
using System.IO;

namespace IOSamples
{
  public class DirectoryRoot
  {
    public static void Main()
    {
    // Create string for a directory. This value should be an existing directory
    // or the sample will throw a DirectoryNotFoundException.
      string dir = @"C:\test";		
      try
      {
          //Set the current directory.
          Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(dir);
      }
      catch (DirectoryNotFoundException e)
      {
          Console.WriteLine("The specified directory does not exist. {0}", e);
      }
    // Print to console the results.
      Console.WriteLine("Root directory: {0}", Directory.GetDirectoryRoot(dir));
      Console.WriteLine("Current directory: {0}", Directory.GetCurrentDirectory());
    }
  }
}
// The output of this sample depends on what value you assign to the variable dir.
// If the directory c:\test exists, the output for this sample is:
// Root directory: C:\
// Current directory: C:\test

Remarks

This method obtains the fully qualified path name of path, as returned by GetFullPath, and returns root directory information. The specified path is not required to exist.

The path parameter is permitted to specify relative or absolute path information. Relative path information is interpreted as relative to the current working directory. To obtain the current working directory, see GetCurrentDirectory.

The case-sensitivity of the path parameter corresponds to that of the file system on which the code is running. For example, it's case-insensitive on NTFS (the default Windows file system) and case-sensitive on Linux file systems.

For a list of common I/O tasks, see Common I/O Tasks.

Applies to

Product Versions
.NET Core 1.0, Core 1.1, Core 2.0, Core 2.1, Core 2.2, Core 3.0, Core 3.1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
.NET Framework 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 4.5.1, 4.5.2, 4.6, 4.6.1, 4.6.2, 4.7, 4.7.1, 4.7.2, 4.8, 4.8.1
.NET Standard 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1
UWP 10.0

See also