Article
11/18/2011

Path.GetFullPath Method

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

When it is called by trusted applications, returns the absolute path for the specified path string.

Namespace: System.IO
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

Syntax

'Declaration
<SecuritySafeCriticalAttribute> _
Public Shared Function GetFullPath ( _
    path As String _
) As String

[SecuritySafeCriticalAttribute]
public static string GetFullPath(
    string path
)

Parameters

path
Type: System.String
The file or directory for which to obtain absolute path information.

Return Value

Type: System.String
A string containing the fully qualified location of path, such as "rootdir\MyFile.txt".

Exceptions

Exception	Condition
ArgumentException	path is a zero-length string, contains only white space, or contains one or more of the invalid characters defined in GetInvalidPathChars. -or- The system could not retrieve the absolute path.
SecurityException	The caller does not have the required permissions.
ArgumentNullException	path is nulla null reference (Nothing in Visual Basic).
PathTooLongException	The specified path, file name, or both exceed the system-defined maximum length. For example, on Windows-based platforms, paths must be less than 248 characters, and file names must be less than 260 characters.

Remarks

The absolute path includes all information required to locate a file or directory on a system.

The file or directory specified by path is not required to exist. For example, if c:\temp\newdir is the current directory, calling GetFullPath on a file name such as test.txt returns c:\temp\newdir\test.txt. The file need not exist.

However, if path does exist, the caller must have permission to obtain path information for path. Note that unlike most members of the Path class, this method accesses the file system.

This method uses current directory and current volume information to fully qualify path. If you specify a file name only in path, GetFullPath returns the fully qualified path of the current directory.

If you pass in a short file name, it is expanded to a long file name.

If a path contains no significant characters it is invalid unless it contains one or more "." characters followed by any number of spaces, then it will be parsed as either "." or "..".

Platform Notes

Silverlight for Windows Phone

This member has a SecurityCriticalAttribute attribute on Silverlight for Windows Phone, because the attribute was present in Silverlight 3. This attribute restricts this member to internal use. Application code that uses this member throws a MethodAccessException.

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Silverlight for Windows Phone

Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: Xbox 360, Windows Phone OS 7.0

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.

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