Illegal characters in path exception

Question

Hello everybody
I have wrote a recursive function in VS2008 with C# Language to scan All folders in a Specific drive.
i used System.Io Functions .

it's here:

        private void scan(string DriveName)
        {
            string[] Directories = Directory.GetDirectories(DriveName);
            foreach (string foldername in Directories)
            {
                scan(foldername);                // recursive call
                listBox1.Items.Add(foldername); // Add Everything To My List
            }
        }

but there is a problem .when i scan a cd contained a folder with invalid name like "$#%$#^|b a b a k %&%&#$#@||" , It encounter problem and scan failed .The message is "Illegal characters in path exception" but I can do that scan by vb6 useing COM Dlls .how can i solve it and scan All file and Folders with illegal names by useing dot net framework classes & functions !

send me your idea please : [email protected]
thank you very much in advanced.
Regards

Sam Hobbs · Answer

If it were me I would investigate those folders. I would attempt to determine how many there are. I would also attempt to determine what they are for. Perhaps they can be deleted or moved to backup. Perhaps they must exist but you don't need them for what you are doing. Also if it were me I sure would look at the Directory class very well; there might be an alternative that would allow you to process the folder names that are causing you problems. For example since performance is important the documentation says to use the Directory.EnumerateDirectories Method instead of GetDirectories for better performance.

IRDump IRDump · Answer

hi thanks for answering . Speed is very important for me . imagine that we have a folder with illegal name & 1GigaByte size;\ in Your Solution We Have a lot of Squandered Time for copying it to another place! how we can do it faster? thank you 4 every thing .

Bryian Tan · Answer

hi I agreed with Sam check if the folder is valid before calling the scan. If the folder contains illegal character copy it to a temp folder with a different name and scan it.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

Before calling scan just check foldername to determine if it is valid. Alternatively put the GetDirectories in a try block with a corresponding catch block. Developers often don't use try/catch enough.