VB.net help -- finding files with certain naming criteria

[Homerboy]

I have a directory with many multiple sub directories, and within those sub-directories many files (pdf and tifs)

I'm in need of a method to search the directories for any file names that contain 16 numerical characters in a row. trick is there are many different naming conventions for the files:

XXXX-1111111111111111-(Y).pdf
2012-1111111111111111_NAME.tif
1111111111111111.pdf
20120828-1111111111111111.pdf
etc etc etc

So I want to identify ANY files with the 16 digits in a row AND pull that portion of file name so I can use it in a SQL look up.

Does that make any sense?

 

[KLin]

1. Iterate through file names of each directory.
2. Check to see if file name is longer than 16 characters
3. iterate through 16 characters of the filename until you get to the last character of the filename and checking to see if it's a number.
4. If 16 character string is a number, do your sql lookup.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

System.IO.directoryInfo and System.IO.fileInfo are the classes you'd be looking at for directory and file exploration. Making a procedure that takes a single directory, compares all files, then recursively calls itself on subdirectories should be simple enough with those classes.


A regex [0-9]{16} compared to the file name should match 16 digit in a row numbers. Regexes should also make it easy to pull it out of the filename from the fileinfo class. Do you also want to match 17, 18, ect row digits?

 

[EagleKeeper]

System.IO.directoryInfo and System.IO.fileInfo are the classes you'd be looking at for directory and file exploration. Making a procedure that takes a single directory, compares all files, then recursively calls itself on subdirectories should be simple enough with those classes.


A regex [0-9]{16} compared to the file name should match 16 digit in a row numbers. Regexes should also make it easy to pull it out of the filename from the fileinfo class. Do you also want to match 17, 18, ect row digits?

Make sure that you check the directory names to ignore the current and parent directory.

Otherwise you get into a never ending recursion loop

 

[ThinkOfTheCode]

You didn't mention which version of .NET you are using. This post has a nice solution in the comments if your framework supports LINQ. This post answers the second part of your question.

I've modified the comment a bit to fit your need and I stole some from the previous posts. (I'm a C# guy so you'll need to change it over to VB.)

var regexTest = new Func<string, bool>(i => Regex.IsMatch(i, @"\d{16}", RegexOptions.Compiled));
var files = Directory.GetFiles(@"c:\path\to\folder", "*", System.IO.AllDirectories).Where(regexTest);
foreach (string file in files)
{
    //matches will have the digits you're looking for
    MatchCollection matches = Regex.Matches(file, @"\d{16}");
}

Here's something you'll find useful. http://converter.telerik.com/