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FileSystemWatcher.Filter Property

.NET Framework 4.5

Gets or sets the filter string used to determine what files are monitored in a directory.

Namespace: System.IO
Assembly: System (in System.dll)

[<SettingsBindableAttribute(true)>]
[<IODescriptionAttribute("FSW_Filter")>]
[<TypeConverterAttribute("System.Diagnostics.Design.StringValueConverter, System.Design, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a")>]
member Filter : string with get, set

Property Value

Type: System.String
The filter string. The default is "*.*" (Watches all files.)

Remarks

To watch changes in all files, set the Filter property to an empty string (""). To watch a specific file, set the Filter property to the file name. For example, to watch for changes in the file MyDoc.txt, set the Filter property to "MyDoc.txt". You can also watch for changes in a certain type of file. For example, to watch for changes in any text files, set the Filter property to "*.txt". Use of multiple filters such as "*.txt|*.doc" is not supported.

The Filter property can be changed after the FileSystemWatcher object has started receiving events.

For more information about filtering out unwanted notifications, see the NotifyFilter, IncludeSubdirectories, and InternalBufferSize properties.

Filter accepts wildcards for matching files, as shown in the following examples.

Filter string	Watches the following files
.	All files (default). An empty string ("") also watches all files.
*.txt	All files with a "txt" extension.
*recipe.doc	All files ending in "recipe" with a "doc" extension.
win*.xml	All files beginning with "win" with an "xml" extension.
Sales*200?.xls	Matches the following: Sales July 2001.xlsSales Aug 2002.xlsSales March 2004.xls but does not match: Sales Nov 1999.xls
MyReport.Doc	Watches only MyReport.doc

Examples

The following example creates a FileSystemWatcher to watch the directory specified at run time. The component is set to watch for changes in LastWrite and LastAccess time, the creation, deletion, or renaming of text files in the directory. If a file is changed, created, or deleted, the path to the file prints to the console. When a file is renamed, the old and new paths print to the console.

Use the System.Diagnostics and System.IO namespaces for this example.

C++

No code example is currently available or this language may not be supported.

Version Information

.NET Framework

Supported in: 4.5, 4, 3.5, 3.0, 2.0, 1.1, 1.0

.NET Framework Client Profile

Supported in: 4, 3.5 SP1

Platforms

Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server 2008 (Server Core Role not supported), Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Role supported with SP1 or later; Itanium not supported)

The .NET Framework does not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.

Reference

FileSystemWatcher Class

System.IO Namespace

NotifyFilter

IncludeSubdirectories

InternalBufferSize

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