How to: Get the Collection of Files...

This page is specific to

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/.NET Framework 2.0

Other versions are also available for the following:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/.NET Framework 3.5

Visual Basic Language Concepts

How to: Get the Collection of Files in a Directory in Visual Basic

The My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles Method returns a read-only collection of strings representing the name of the files within a directory. You can use the wildCards parameter to specify a specific pattern. 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 list files in a directory

Use the GetFiles method, supplying the name and path of the directory to search. The following example returns all files in the directory and adds them to ListBox1.
Visual Basic
```
For Each foundFile As String In My.Computer.FileSystem.GetFiles _
(My.Computer.FileSystem.SpecialDirectories.MyDocuments)
    listBox1.Items.Add(foundFile)
Next
```
This code example is also available as an IntelliSense code snippet. In the code snippet picker, it is located in File system - Processing Drives, Folders, and Files. For more information, see How to: Insert Snippets Into Your Code (Visual Basic).

Robust Programming

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 directory 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).

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To list files in a directory

Robust Programming

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