How to get relative path from absolute path

Question

There\'s a part in my apps that displays the file path loaded by the user through OpenFileDialog. It\'s taking up too much space to display the whole path, but I don\'t want

Answer 1

If you're sure that your absolute path 2 is always relative to absolute path, just remove the first N characters from path2, where N is the length of path1.

Answer 2

    public static string ToRelativePath(string filePath, string refPath)
    {
        var pathNormalized = Path.GetFullPath(filePath);

        var refNormalized = Path.GetFullPath(refPath);
        refNormalized = refNormalized.TrimEnd('\\', '/');

        if (!pathNormalized.StartsWith(refNormalized))
            throw new ArgumentException();
        var res = pathNormalized.Substring(refNormalized.Length + 1);
        return res;
    }

Answer 3

The function that uses URI returned "almost" relative path. It included directory that directly contains the file which relative path I wanted to get.

Some time ago I wrote a simple function that returns relative path of folder or file, and even if it's on another drive, it includes the drive letter as well.

Please take a look:

    public static string GetRelativePath(string BasePath, string AbsolutePath)
    {
        char Separator = Path.DirectorySeparatorChar;
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(BasePath)) BasePath = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();
        var ReturnPath = "";
        var CommonPart = "";
        var BasePathFolders = BasePath.Split(Separator);
        var AbsolutePathFolders = AbsolutePath.Split(Separator);
        var i = 0;
        while (i < BasePathFolders.Length & i < AbsolutePathFolders.Length)
        {
            if (BasePathFolders[i].ToLower() == AbsolutePathFolders[i].ToLower())
            {
                CommonPart += BasePathFolders[i] + Separator;
            }
            else
            {
                break;
            }
            i += 1;
        }
        if (CommonPart.Length > 0)
        {
            var parents = BasePath.Substring(CommonPart.Length - 1).Split(Separator);
            foreach (var ParentDir in parents)
            {
                if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ParentDir))
                    ReturnPath += ".." + Separator;
            }
        }
        ReturnPath += AbsolutePath.Substring(CommonPart.Length);
        return ReturnPath;
    }

Answer 4

Use:

RelPath = AbsPath.Replace(ApplicationPath, ".")

Answer 5

I'd split both of your paths at the directory level. From there, find the point of divergence and work your way back to the assembly folder, prepending a '../' everytime you pass a directory.

Keep in mind however, that an absolute path works everywhere and is usually easier to read than a relative one. I personally wouldn't show an user a relative path unless it was absolutely necessary.