fileinfo[]

Question

what is limitation of fileinfo[] i.e. FileInfo[] fiArr = di.GetFiles(); how much file info fiarr can hold suppose we give c drive as get file to fiarr than how much file it will hold. what is the limitation and if exist how to overcome that limitation

Sunny Sharma · Answer

Hi Nishant Of course the answer remains same. No matter how many files are there in any directory you point to. What only matters is how much free memory your system is occupied with. For example suppose you have a plastic bag having capacity of 10kg of rice. Now if you will try to put packets of 1 kg-it can hold only 10. Likewise if you put packets of 100 grams it will hold a 100 and if you'll put packets of 10 grams it will hold a 1000 of packets. Similarly FileInfo[] or any Array can hold the maximum objects until the memory is out. For your second question I would say-You heard it right. Each File System can have specific naming rules about the formation of the individual components in the path to a directory or file. For NTFS they're limited to what you've heard i.e. Directory names cannot be longer than 248 characters and a filename ( including it's path ) cannot be longer than 260 characters. Refer to MSDN for more clarification. So as long as you're using Windows there's no way to overcome this naming limitation. Hope it clarifies your question :)

nishant ranjan · Answer

thanks

nishant ranjan · Answer

@sunny kumar DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo(@D:\); FileInfo[] fiArr = di.GetFiles(); now i suppose fiArr will contain info of all file in d drive. let me know if am wrong.now suppose d\some folder contains million billion of files than what is the limitation of fileinfo[]. is the answer remains same as u have posted??? plz explain the concept and one more query smwhere i read the file path which is stored in fileinfo length should not be greater than 260 char and directory name should not be greater than 248 char. is it true. if yes then there any way to overcome this limitation

Sunny Sharma · Answer

Dear Nishant Directory.GetFiles(some directory path); gives you an array of strings which holds all the file names inside a directory. AFAIK You cannot cast it to a FileInfo array. FileInfo object holds all the information pertaining to a single file hence FileInfo[] would expect an array of FileInfo objects not of the strings. And to answer your second part of question the maximum length of any array is limited to the memory or virtual memory available. Hope I answered your question. Happy Coding :) Cheers!