How to: Find Files with a Specific Pattern in Visual Basic

The GetFiles method returns a read-only collection of strings representing the path names for the files. You can use the wildCards parameter to specify a specific pattern. If you would like to include subdirectories in the search, set the searchType parameter to SearchOption.SearchAllSubDirectories.

An empty collection is returned if no files matching the specified pattern are found.

To find files with a specified pattern

• Use the GetFiles method, supplying the name and path of the directory you want to search and specifying the pattern. The following example returns all files with the extension .dll in the directory and adds them to ListBox1.

  For Each foundFile As String In My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles(
      My.Computer.FileSystem.SpecialDirectories.MyDocuments,
      Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.SearchOption.SearchAllSubDirectories, "*.dll")
  
      Listbox1.Items.Add(foundFile)
  Next
  

.NET Framework Security

The following conditions may cause an exception:

• The path is not valid for one of the following reasons: it is a zero-length string, it contains only white space, it contains invalid characters, or it is a device path (starts with \\.\) (ArgumentException).

• The path is not valid because it is Nothing (ArgumentNullException).

• directory does not exist (DirectoryNotFoundException).

• directory points to an existing file (IOException).

• The path exceeds the system-defined maximum length (PathTooLongException).

• A file or folder name in the path contains a colon (:) or is in an invalid format (NotSupportedException).

• The user lacks necessary permissions to view the path (SecurityException).

• The user lacks necessary permissions (UnauthorizedAccessException).

See also

• GetFiles
• How to: Find Subdirectories with a Specific Pattern
• Troubleshooting: Reading from and Writing to Text Files
• How to: Get the Collection of Files in a Directory