Can You Call Directory.Getfiles() With Multiple Filters

Can you call Directory.GetFiles() with multiple filters?

For .NET 4.0 and later,

var files = Directory.EnumerateFiles("C:\\path", "*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories)
            .Where(s => s.EndsWith(".mp3") || s.EndsWith(".jpg"));

For earlier versions of .NET,

var files = Directory.GetFiles("C:\\path", "*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories)
            .Where(s => s.EndsWith(".mp3") || s.EndsWith(".jpg"));

edit: Please read the comments. The improvement that Paul Farry suggests, and the memory/performance issue that Christian.K points out are both very important.

Multiple file-extensions searchPattern for System.IO.Directory.GetFiles

I believe there is no "out of the box" solution, that's a limitation of the Directory.GetFiles method.

It's fairly easy to write your own method though, here is an example.

The code could be:

/// <summary>
/// Returns file names from given folder that comply to given filters
/// </summary>
/// <param name="SourceFolder">Folder with files to retrieve</param>
/// <param name="Filter">Multiple file filters separated by | character</param>
/// <param name="searchOption">File.IO.SearchOption, 
/// could be AllDirectories or TopDirectoryOnly</param>
/// <returns>Array of FileInfo objects that presents collection of file names that 
/// meet given filter</returns>
public string[] getFiles(string SourceFolder, string Filter, 
 System.IO.SearchOption searchOption)
{
 // ArrayList will hold all file names
ArrayList alFiles = new ArrayList();

 // Create an array of filter string
 string[] MultipleFilters = Filter.Split('|');

 // for each filter find mathing file names
 foreach (string FileFilter in MultipleFilters)
 {
  // add found file names to array list
  alFiles.AddRange(Directory.GetFiles(SourceFolder, FileFilter, searchOption));
 }

 // returns string array of relevant file names
 return (string[])alFiles.ToArray(typeof(string));
}

How can Directory.Getfiles() multi searchpattern filters c#

You could use something like this

string[] extensions = { "jpg", "txt", "asp", "css", "cs", "xml" };

string[] dizin = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\s\sent", "*.*")
    .Where(f => extensions.Contains(f.Split('.').Last().ToLower())).ToArray();

Or use FileInfo.Extension bit safer than String.Split but may be slower

string[] extensions = { ".jpg", ".txt", ".asp", ".css", ".cs", ".xml" };

string[] dizin = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\s\sent", "*.*")
    .Where(f => extensions.Contains(new FileInfo(f).Extension.ToLower())).ToArray();

Or as juharr mentioned you can also use System.IO.Path.GetExtension

string[] extensions = { ".jpg", ".txt", ".asp", ".css", ".cs", ".xml" };

string[] dizin = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\s\sent", "*.*")
    .Where(f => extensions.Contains(System.IO.Path.GetExtension(f).ToLower())).ToArray();

Multiple filters with Directory.GetFiles?

The Directory.GetFiles function doesn't support multiple filters. My solution:

string patter = "*.jpg|*.png|*.gif";
string[] filters = patter.Split('|');
foreach(string filter in filters )
{
  // call Directory.GetFiles(path, filter) here;
}

GetFiles with multiple extensions

Why not create an extension method? That's more readable.

public static IEnumerable<FileInfo> GetFilesByExtensions(this DirectoryInfo dir, params string[] extensions)
{
    if (extensions == null) 
         throw new ArgumentNullException("extensions");
    IEnumerable<FileInfo> files = Enumerable.Empty<FileInfo>();
    foreach(string ext in extensions)
    {
       files = files.Concat(dir.GetFiles(ext));
    }
    return files;
}

EDIT: a more efficient version:

public static IEnumerable<FileInfo> GetFilesByExtensions(this DirectoryInfo dir, params string[] extensions)
{
    if (extensions == null) 
         throw new ArgumentNullException("extensions");
    IEnumerable<FileInfo> files = dir.EnumerateFiles();
    return files.Where(f => extensions.Contains(f.Extension));
}

Usage:

DirectoryInfo dInfo = new DirectoryInfo(@"c:\MyDir");
dInfo.GetFilesByExtensions(".jpg",".exe",".gif");

Directory.GetFiles with multiple filters, collect one string array

try :

 string sourceDir = "C:\\Users\\ozkan\\Desktop\\foto\\"
 string[] picList;        
 string pattern = "*.jpg|*.png|*.gif";
 string[] filters = pattern.Split('|');
 picList =  filters .SelectMany(f=> Directory.GetFiles(sourceDir , f)).ToArray();          

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