How do I check if a given string is a legal/valid file name under Windows?

Question

I want to include a batch file rename functionality in my application. A user can type a destination filename pattern and (after replacing some wildcards in the pattern) I n

Answer 1

Also CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM# and a few others are never legal filenames in any directory with any extension.

Answer 2

many of these answers will not work if the filename is too long & running on a pre Windows 10 environment. Similarly, have a think about what you want to do with periods - allowing leading or trailing is technically valid, but can create problems if you do not want the file to be difficult to see or delete respectively.

This is a validation attribute I created to check for a valid filename.

public class ValidFileNameAttribute : ValidationAttribute
{
    public ValidFileNameAttribute()
    {
        RequireExtension = true;
        ErrorMessage = "{0} is an Invalid Filename";
        MaxLength = 255; //superseeded in modern windows environments
    }
    public override bool IsValid(object value)
    {
        //http://stackoverflow.com/questions/422090/in-c-sharp-check-that-filename-is-possibly-valid-not-that-it-exists
        var fileName = (string)value;
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(fileName)) { return true;  }
        if (fileName.IndexOfAny(Path.GetInvalidFileNameChars()) > -1 ||
            (!AllowHidden && fileName[0] == '.') ||
            fileName[fileName.Length - 1]== '.' ||
            fileName.Length > MaxLength)
        {
            return false;
        }
        string extension = Path.GetExtension(fileName);
        return (!RequireExtension || extension != string.Empty)
            && (ExtensionList==null || ExtensionList.Contains(extension));
    }
    private const string _sepChar = ",";
    private IEnumerable<string> ExtensionList { get; set; }
    public bool AllowHidden { get; set; }
    public bool RequireExtension { get; set; }
    public int MaxLength { get; set; }
    public string AllowedExtensions {
        get { return string.Join(_sepChar, ExtensionList); } 
        set {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
            { ExtensionList = null; }
            else {
                ExtensionList = value.Split(new char[] { _sepChar[0] })
                    .Select(s => s[0] == '.' ? s : ('.' + s))
                    .ToList();
            }
    } }

    public override bool RequiresValidationContext => false;
}

and the tests

[TestMethod]
public void TestFilenameAttribute()
{
    var rxa = new ValidFileNameAttribute();
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("pptx."));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("pp.tx."));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("."));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid(".pp.tx"));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid(".pptx"));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("pptx"));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("a/abc.pptx"));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("a\\abc.pptx"));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("c:abc.pptx"));
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("c<abc.pptx"));
    Assert.IsTrue(rxa.IsValid("abc.pptx"));
    rxa = new ValidFileNameAttribute { AllowedExtensions = ".pptx" };
    Assert.IsFalse(rxa.IsValid("abc.docx"));
    Assert.IsTrue(rxa.IsValid("abc.pptx"));
}

Answer 3

One liner for verifying illigal chars in the string:

public static bool IsValidFilename(string testName) => !Regex.IsMatch(testName, "[" + Regex.Escape(new string(System.IO.Path.InvalidPathChars)) + "]");

Answer 4

I use this to get rid of invalid characters in filenames without throwing exceptions:

private static readonly Regex InvalidFileRegex = new Regex(
    string.Format("[{0}]", Regex.Escape(@"<>:""/\|?*")));

public static string SanitizeFileName(string fileName)
{
    return InvalidFileRegex.Replace(fileName, string.Empty);
}

Answer 5

To complement the other answers, here are a couple of additional edge cases that you might want to consider.

• Excel can have problems if you save a workbook in a file whose name contains the '[' or ']' characters. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/215205 for details.

• Sharepoint has a whole additional set of restrictions. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905231 for details.

Answer 6

One corner case to keep in mind, which surprised me when I first found out about it: Windows allows leading space characters in file names! For example, the following are all legal, and distinct, file names on Windows (minus the quotes):

"file.txt"
" file.txt"
"  file.txt"

One takeaway from this: Use caution when writing code that trims leading/trailing whitespace from a filename string.