Directory.GetDirectories Method

Directory.GetDirectories Method

Class

System.IO.Directory

Syntax

 Directory.GetDirectories(   path   [,   searchpattern   ])

path (required; String): A valid path to a directory
searchpattern (optional; String): A directory specification, including wildcard characters

Return Value

An array of strings, each element of which is the name of a subdirectory

Description

Returns the names of the subdirectories in a particular directory

Rules at a Glance

path can be either an absolute path (a complete path from the root directory to the directory whose subdirectories are to be retrieved) or a relative path (starting from the current directory to the directory whose subdirectories are to be retrieved).
path can be either a path on the local system, the path of a mapped network drive, or a UNC path.
path cannot contain wildcard characters.
If searchpattern is specified, the method returns only those directories whose names match the string, which can contain wildcard characters. Otherwise, searchpattern returns the names of all the subdirectories in the target directory specified by path .
If the directory specified by path has no subdirectories, or if no directories match searchpattern , an empty array is returned.

Example

The following code displays all subdirectories of c:\ whose names start with the letter P:

 Dim sDirs(  ) As String Dim i As Integer sDirs = Directory.GetDirectories("c:\", "P*") For i = 0 To UBound(sDirs)     Console.WriteLine(sDirs(i)) Next

Programming Tips and Gotchas

Since GetDirectories can return an empty array, you can prevent an array access error in either of two ways: you can iterate the returned array using the For Each...Next construct, or you can retrieve the value of the UBound function, which is -1 in the case of an uninitialized array.