The System.IO.DirectoryInfo class represents a directory in your file system. Its capabilities are similar to the  System.IO.Directory class. You need to create an instance of DirectoryInfo class to make use of its properties and methods.

DirectoryInfo directory = new DirectoryInfo(@"C:Directory");

The constructor of the DirectoryInfo class accepts   a string argument which is the path of the directory that it will represent. You can then execute different methods such as creating, deleting, moving, and   checking the details about the directory. You can also use some of the useful properties of this class as shown in the table below.

 Properties  Description
 Attributes  Gets the attributes of the directory.
 CreationTime  The date and time the directory was created.
 Exists  Returns true if the directory exists in the file system.
 LastAccessTime  The date and time the directory was last accessed.
 LastWriteTime  The date and time the directory was last modified.
 Name  Returns the name of the directory.
 FullName  Gets the full path of the directory or file.
 Parent  Gets the parent of the specified subdirectory.
 Root  Gets the root portion of the path.

Figure 1 – System.IO.DirectoryInfo Properties

The Parent property returns the name of the parent directory of the DirectoryInfo intance. For example, the parent directory of C:DirectorySubdirectory is Directory. The Root property returns the root directory of the DirectoryInfo. For example, the root directory of C:Directory is C:.

The following are some of the methods of the DirectoryInfo class.

 Properties  Description
 Create  Creates a directory.
 CreateSubdirectory  Creates a subdirectory or subdirectories in the specified path. The path can be   relative to the instance of System.IO.DirectoryInfo   class.
 Delete  Deletes the directory.
 EnumerateDirectories  Returns a list of DirectoryInfo objects which are   the subdirectories of the DirectoryInfo instance.
 EnumerateFiles  Returns a list of FileInfo objects which are the   files located in the DirectoryInfo instance.
 GetDirectories  Same as EnumerateDirectories but returns the   result as an array.
 GetFiles  Same as EnumerateFiles but returns the result as   an array.
 MoveTo  Moves the directory to another directory.

Figure 2 – System.IO.DirectoryInfo Properties

 Creating Subdirectories

The CreateSubdirectory method is used to create subdirectories. Consider the following example.

DirectoryInfo directory = new DirectoryInfo(@"C:Directory");
directory.Create(); //Creates C:Directory
directory.CreateSubdirectory("Subdirectory"); //Creates C:DirectorySubdirectory

The path you give as the argument to the CreateSubdirectory method is a relative path. Which means, you don’t need to write the full path of the subdirectory. It will be relative to the path contained by the DirectoryInfo object.

 Enumerating Directories and Files

You can use EnumerateDirectories,  EnumerateFiles, GetDirectories, or GetFiles to retrieve a   list of the directories and files contained by the directory of the  DirectoryInfo instance. The difference of the two   pairs is EnumereateDirectories and   EnumerateFiles returns the result as a System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T> where T is DirectoryInfo or  FileInfo. GetDirectories and GetFiles returns the result as a simple  DirectoryInfo or FileInfo   array. The following code shows the list of files in a directory.

DirectoryInfo directory = new DirectoryInfo(@"C:");
IEnumerable<FileInfo> files = directory.EnumerateFiles();

foreach (FileInfo file in files)
{
    Console.WriteLine(file.Name);
}

The output is not shown because the results will depend on the files contained in your C: directory.

You can use an overloaded of the four methods which accept a string argument that will serve as a search pattern or a filter to the results. For example, you   can only list all the files with the extension .txt.

IEnumerable<FileInfo> textFiles = directory.EnumerateFiles("*.txt");

The * is a wildcard character that represents the   name of the file. The textFiles will now contain a   list of FileInfo objects that has a .txt  extension.