How to filter Directory.EnumerateFiles with multiple criteria?
I have the following code:
List<string> result = new List<string>();
foreach (string file in Directory.EnumerateFiles(path,"*.*",
SearchOption.AllDirectories)
.Where(s => s.EndsWith(".mp3") || s.EndsWith(".wma")))
{
result.Add(file);
}
It works fine and does what I need. Except for one small thing. I would like to find a better way to filter on multiple extensions. I would like to use a string array with filters such as this:
string[] extensions = { "*.mp3", "*.wma", "*.mp4", "*.wav" };
What is the most efficient way to do this using NET Framework 4.0/LINQ? Any suggestions?
I'd appreciate any help being an occasional programmer :-)
Solution 1:
I created some helper methods to solve this which I blogged about earlier this year.
One version takes a regex pattern \.mp3|\.mp4
, and the other a string list and runs in parallel.
public static class MyDirectory
{ // Regex version
public static IEnumerable<string> GetFiles(string path,
string searchPatternExpression = "",
SearchOption searchOption = SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly)
{
Regex reSearchPattern = new Regex(searchPatternExpression, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
return Directory.EnumerateFiles(path, "*", searchOption)
.Where(file =>
reSearchPattern.IsMatch(Path.GetExtension(file)));
}
// Takes same patterns, and executes in parallel
public static IEnumerable<string> GetFiles(string path,
string[] searchPatterns,
SearchOption searchOption = SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly)
{
return searchPatterns.AsParallel()
.SelectMany(searchPattern =>
Directory.EnumerateFiles(path, searchPattern, searchOption));
}
}
Solution 2:
Stripped from the LINQ context, this comes down to how to find out if a file matches a list of extensions. System.IO.Path.GetExtension()
is a better choice here than String.EndsWith()
. The multiple ||
can be replaced with .Contains()
or .IndexOf()
depending on the collection.
var extensions = new HashSet<string>(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
{ ".mp3", ".wma", ".mp4", ".wav" };
... s => extensions.Contains(Path.GetExtension(s))