C#: How would you make a unique filename by adding a number?

Question

I would like to create a method which takes either a filename as a string or a FileInfo and adds an incremented number to the filename if the file

Answer 1

    private async Task<CloudBlockBlob> CreateBlockBlob(CloudBlobContainer container,  string blobNameToCreate)
    {
        var blockBlob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(blobNameToCreate);

        var i = 1;
        while (await blockBlob.ExistsAsync())
        {
            var newBlobNameToCreate = CreateRandomFileName(blobNameToCreate,i.ToString());
            blockBlob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(newBlobNameToCreate);
            i++;
        }

        return blockBlob;
    }



    private string CreateRandomFileName(string fileNameWithExtension, string prefix=null)
    {

        int fileExtPos = fileNameWithExtension.LastIndexOf(".", StringComparison.Ordinal);

        if (fileExtPos >= 0)
        {
            var ext = fileNameWithExtension.Substring(fileExtPos, fileNameWithExtension.Length - fileExtPos);
            var fileName = fileNameWithExtension.Substring(0, fileExtPos);

            return String.Format("{0}_{1}{2}", fileName, String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(prefix) ? new Random().Next(int.MinValue, int.MaxValue).ToString():prefix,ext);
        }

        //This means there is no Extension for the file and its fine attaching random number at the end.
        return String.Format("{0}_{1}", fileNameWithExtension, new Random().Next(int.MinValue, int.MaxValue));
    }

I use this code to create a consecutive _1,_2,_3 etc.. file name everytime a file exists in the blob storage.

Answer 2

This is just a string operation; find the location in the filename string where you want to insert the number, and re-construct a new string with the number inserted. To make it re-usable, you might want to look for a number in that location, and parse it out into an integer, so you can increment it.

Please note that this in general this way of generating a unique filename is insecure; there are obvious race condition hazards.

There might be ready-made solutions for this in the platform, I'm not up to speed with C# so I can't help there.

Answer 3

If the format doesn't bother you then you can call:

try{
    string tempFile=System.IO.Path.GetTempFileName();
    string file=System.IO.Path.GetFileName(tempFile);
    //use file
    System.IO.File.Delete(tempFile);
}catch(IOException ioe){
  //handle 
}catch(FileIOPermission fp){
  //handle
}

PS:- Please read more about this at msdn before using.

Answer 4

Instead of poking the disk a number of times to find out if it has a particular variant of the desired file name, you could ask for the list of files that already exist and find the first gap according to your algorithm.

public static class FileInfoExtensions
{
    public static FileInfo MakeUnique(this FileInfo fileInfo)
    {
        if (fileInfo == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("fileInfo");
        }

        string newfileName = new FileUtilities().GetNextFileName(fileInfo.FullName);
        return new FileInfo(newfileName);
    }
}

public class FileUtilities
{
    public string GetNextFileName(string fullFileName)
    {
        if (fullFileName == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("fullFileName");
        }

        if (!File.Exists(fullFileName))
        {
            return fullFileName;
        }
        string baseFileName = Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fullFileName);
        string ext = Path.GetExtension(fullFileName);

        string filePath = Path.GetDirectoryName(fullFileName);
        var numbersUsed = Directory.GetFiles(filePath, baseFileName + "*" + ext)
            .Select(x => Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(x).Substring(baseFileName.Length))
            .Select(x =>
                    {
                        int result;
                        return Int32.TryParse(x, out result) ? result : 0;
                    })
            .Distinct()
            .OrderBy(x => x)
            .ToList();

        var firstGap = numbersUsed
            .Select((x, i) => new { Index = i, Item = x })
            .FirstOrDefault(x => x.Index != x.Item);
        int numberToUse = firstGap != null ? firstGap.Item : numbersUsed.Count;
        return Path.Combine(filePath, baseFileName) + numberToUse + ext;
    }
}    

Answer 5

I did it like this:

for (int i = 0; i <= 500; i++) //I suppose the number of files will not pass 500
        {       //Checks if C:\log\log+TheNumberOfTheFile+.txt exists...
            if (System.IO.File.Exists(@"C:\log\log"+conta_logs+".txt"))
            {
                conta_logs++;//If exists, then increment the counter
            }
            else
            {              //If not, then the file is created
                var file = System.IO.File.Create(@"C:\log\log" + conta_logs + ".txt");
                break; //When the file is created we LEAVE the *for* loop
            }
        }

I think this version is not so hard like the others, and It's a straightforward answer for what the user wanted.

Answer 6

If you need just a unique file name, so, how about this?

Path.GetRandomFileName()