Directory Class

Directory Class

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Namespace

System.IO

Creatable

No

Description

The Directory class has a number of members that allow you to retrieve information about directories, to move and delete a directory, and to create a new directory. All of the members of the Directory class are shared methods, so they can be called without instantiating any objects. For example, use the following statement to call the CreateDirectory method:

     Directory.CreateDirectory("C:\projects\project1") 

The following table lists some of the more useful and interesting members of the Directory class. Those marked with an asterisk (*) have separate entries in this chapter.

Member	Description
CreateDirectory Method *	Creates a new directory
Delete Method *	Deletes an existing directory
Exists Method *	Tests a directory to see if it exists
GetCreationTime Method *	Gets the original creation date and time of a directory
GetCurrentDirectory Method	Gets the directory used for the "current" directory, from which all relative paths derive
GetDirectories Method *	Gets an array of all directories within a parent directory
GetDirectoryRoot Method *	Gets the drive root of a given directory
GetFiles Method *	Gets an array of all files within a parent directory
GetFileSystemEntries Method *	Gets an array of all files and directories within a parent directory
GetLastAccessTime Method	Gets the date and time that a directory was last accessed
GetLastWriteTime Method	Gets the date and time that a directory was last modified
GetLogicalDrives Method *	Gets an array of all logical drives on the local system
GetParent Method *	Gets the parent directory of a given directory
Move Method *	Moves a directory to a new location
SetCurrentDirectory Method	Selects the directory used for the "current" directory, from which all relative paths derive

Version Differences

• The Directory object loosely corresponds to the Folder object in the FileSystem Object object model, part of the Microsoft Scripting Runtime Library and often used in VBScript and ASP-based web development. There is, however, a significant difference in the members of each class, and, in some cases, methods with similar functionality have different names.

• Visual Basic 2005 includes a My.Computer.FileSystem object that provides directory management functionality.

See Also

File Class