Function to shrink file path to be more human readable

Question

Is there any function in c# to shink a file path ?

Input: \"c:\\users\\Windows\\Downloaded Program Files\\Folder\\Inside\\example\\file.txt\"

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Answer 1

If you want to write you own solution to this problem, use build in classes like: FileInfo, Directory, etc... which makes it less error prone.

The following code produces "VS style" shortened path like: "C:\...\Folder\File.ext".

public static class PathFormatter
{
    public static string ShrinkPath(string absolutePath, int limit, string spacer = "…")
    {
        if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(absolutePath))
        {
            return string.Empty;
        }
        if (absolutePath.Length <= limit)
        {
            return absolutePath;
        }

        var parts = new List<string>();

        var fi = new FileInfo(absolutePath);
        string drive = Path.GetPathRoot(fi.FullName);

        parts.Add(drive.TrimEnd('\\'));
        parts.Add(spacer);
        parts.Add(fi.Name);

        var ret = string.Join("\\", parts);
        var dir = fi.Directory;

        while (ret.Length < limit && dir != null)
        {
            if (ret.Length + dir.Name.Length > limit)
            {
                break;
            }

            parts.Insert(2, dir.Name);

            dir = dir.Parent;
            ret = string.Join("\\", parts);
        }

        return ret;
    }
}

Answer 2

Jeff Atwood posted a solution to this on his blog and here it is :

[DllImport("shlwapi.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
static extern bool PathCompactPathEx([Out] StringBuilder pszOut, string szPath, int cchMax, int dwFlags);

static string PathShortener(string path, int length)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    PathCompactPathEx(sb, path, length, 0);
    return sb.ToString();
}

It uses the unmanaged function PathCompactPathEx to achieve what you want.