How to quickly check if folder is empty (.NET)?

Question

I have to check, if directory on disk is empty. It means, that it does not contain any folders/files. I know, that there is a simple method. We get array of FileSystemInfo\'

Answer 1

Here is the extra fast solution, that I finally implemented. Here I am using WinAPI and functions FindFirstFile, FindNextFile. It allows to avoid enumeration of all items in Folder and stops right after detecting the first object in the Folder. This approach is ~6(!!) times faster, than described above. 250 calls in 36ms!

private static readonly IntPtr INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE = new IntPtr(-1);

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
private struct WIN32_FIND_DATA
{
    public uint dwFileAttributes;
    public System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComTypes.FILETIME ftCreationTime;
    public System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComTypes.FILETIME ftLastAccessTime;
    public System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComTypes.FILETIME ftLastWriteTime;
    public uint nFileSizeHigh;
    public uint nFileSizeLow;
    public uint dwReserved0;
    public uint dwReserved1;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 260)]
    public string cFileName;
    [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.ByValTStr, SizeConst = 14)]
    public string cAlternateFileName;
}

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern IntPtr FindFirstFile(string lpFileName, out WIN32_FIND_DATA lpFindFileData);

[DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet=CharSet.Auto)]
private static extern bool FindNextFile(IntPtr hFindFile, out WIN32_FIND_DATA lpFindFileData);

[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
private static extern bool FindClose(IntPtr hFindFile);

public static bool CheckDirectoryEmpty_Fast(string path)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(path))
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException(path);
    }

    if (Directory.Exists(path))
    {
        if (path.EndsWith(Path.DirectorySeparatorChar.ToString()))
            path += "*";
        else
            path += Path.DirectorySeparatorChar + "*";

        WIN32_FIND_DATA findData;
        var findHandle = FindFirstFile(path, out findData);

        if (findHandle != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
        {
            try
            {
                bool empty = true;
                do
                {
                    if (findData.cFileName != "." && findData.cFileName != "..")
                        empty = false;
                } while (empty && FindNextFile(findHandle, out findData));

                return empty;
            }
            finally
            {
                FindClose(findHandle);
            }
        }

        throw new Exception("Failed to get directory first file",
            Marshal.GetExceptionForHR(Marshal.GetHRForLastWin32Error()));
    }
    throw new DirectoryNotFoundException();
}

I hope it will be useful for somebody in the future.

Answer 2

You will have to go the hard drive for this information in any case, and this alone will trump any object creation and array filling.

Answer 3

Easy and simple:

int num = Directory.GetFiles(pathName).Length;

if (num == 0)
{
   //empty
}

Answer 4

Use this. It's simple.

Public Function IsDirectoryEmpty(ByVal strDirectoryPath As String) As Boolean
        Dim s() As String = _
            Directory.GetFiles(strDirectoryPath)
        If s.Length = 0 Then
            Return True
        Else
            Return False
        End If
    End Function

Answer 5

I'm not aware of a method that will succinctly tell you if a given folder contains any other folders or files, however, using:

Directory.GetFiles(path);
&
Directory.GetDirectories(path);

should help performance since both of these methods will only return an array of strings with the names of the files/directories rather than entire FileSystemInfo objects.

Answer 6

I don't know about the performance statistics on this one, but have you tried using the Directory.GetFiles() static method ?

It returns a string array containing filenames (not FileInfos) and you can check the length of the array in the same way as above.