How do I get .NET's Path.Combine to convert forward slashes to backslashes?

Question

I'm using Path.Combine like so:

Path.Combine("test1/test2", "test3\\test4"); 

The output I get is:

test1/test2\test3\test4 

Notice how the forward slash doesn't get converted to a backslash. I know I can do string.Replace to change it, but is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

As others have said, Path.Combine doesn't change the separator. However if you convert it to a full path:

Path.GetFullPath(Path.Combine("test1/test2", "test3\\test4")) 

the resulting fully qualified path will use the standard directory separator (backslash for Windows).

Note that this works on Windows because both \ and / are legal path separators:

Path.DirectorySeparatorChar = \ Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar = / 

If you run on, say, .NET Core 2.0 on Linux, only the forward slash is a legal path separator:

Path.DirectorySeparatorChar = / Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar = / 

and in this case it won't convert backslash to forward slash, because backslash is not a legal alternate path separator.