Determining if file exists using c# and resolving UNC path

Question

I am trying to write a function to determine if a file exists. The two methods prove to return inconsistent results (fileExists() seems to provide accurate results, compared to isFileFound(), that returns false positives - i would have expected an exception when trying to create the instance).

protected bool isFileFound(string path, string fileName)     {         System.IO.FileInfo fi = null;          bool found = false;         try         {             fi = new System.IO.FileInfo(path + fileName);             found = true;         }         catch (Exception e)         {             baselogger.Fatal(e.Message + " " + e.StackTrace + " \n" + path + fileName);         }          return found;     }      protected bool fileExists(string path, string pattern)     {         bool success = false;          try         {             success = File.Exists(path + pattern);         }         catch (Exception e)         {             baselogger.Warn(e.Message + " " + e.StackTrace + " " + e.Source);         }          return success;     } 

Neither seems to be able to resolve a UNC path of the following syntax: \\abcserver\c$\xyzfolder\foo.bar

Any idea why the unc path is failing for these methods would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

You can create a FileInfo for an non-existing file. But then you can check the FileInfo.Exists property to determine whether the file exists, e.g:

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(somePath); bool exists = fi.Exists; 

Update: In a short test this also worked for UNC paths, e.g. like this:

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(@"\\server\share\file.txt"); bool exists = fi.Exists; 

Are you sure that the account (under which your application is running) has access to the share. I think that (by default) administrative rights are required to access the share "c$".