Executable directory where application is running from?

I need to get the path (not the executable) where my application is running from:

System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory()

When I run the above statement with & "/images/image.jpg" on my local machine it works fine but when I install the application on another machine it says it cannot find the file and there is a lot of extra path information some.

I just need the directory of where the app is running. I am coding in VB.NET with Visual Studio 2008.

Thanks!


This is the first post on google so I thought I'd post different ways that are available and how they compare. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to create a table here, so it's an image. The code for each is below the image using fully qualified names.

enter image description here

My.Application.Info.DirectoryPath

Environment.CurrentDirectory

System.Windows.Forms.Application.StartupPath

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.Location

System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.CodeBase

New System.UriBuilder(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.CodeBase)

Path.GetDirectoryName(Uri.UnescapeDataString((New System.UriBuilder(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.CodeBase).Path)))

Uri.UnescapeDataString((New System.UriBuilder(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.CodeBase).Path))

--- Edit October 18, 2021:

Sigh... None of the above work if using net5.0 or net6.0 and publishing app as single-file bundle. Best I got now is:

// This will give you the directory but not the assembly
string basedir = AppContext.BaseDirectory;
// Before you package the app as a single file bundle, you will get the dll.  
// But after you publish it, you'll get the exe. 
string pathToExecutable = Environment.GetCommandLineArgs()[0].Replace(".dll", ".exe");

Dim strPath As String = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName( _
    System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CodeBase)

Taken from HOW TO: Determine the Executing Application's Path (MSDN)


I needed to know this and came here, before I remembered the Environment class.

In case anyone else had this issue, just use this: Environment.CurrentDirectory.

Example:

Dim dataDirectory As String = String.Format("{0}\Data\", Environment.CurrentDirectory)

When run from Visual Studio in debug mode yeilds:

C:\Development\solution folder\application folder\bin\debug

This is the exact behaviour I needed, and its simple and straightforward enough.