how to search the computer for files and folders
Solution 1
Since you mentioned windows, the most straight forward winapi way to do it is with FindFirstFile and FindNextFile functions.
edit: Here's an example that shows you how to enumerate all files/folders in a directory.
#include <Windows.h>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
WIN32_FIND_DATA file;
HANDLE search_handle=FindFirstFile(L"C:\\*",&file);
if (search_handle)
{
do
{
std::wcout << file.cFileName << std::endl;
}while(FindNextFile(search_handle,&file));
FindClose(search_handle);
}
}
Solution 2
This will be OS dependent. The SO question
How can I get a list of files in a directory using C or C++?
handles this problem well. You can download DIRENT here.
Now that you have this, I'd recommend recursively searching for a file with a DFS/BFS algorithm. You can assume the whole directory structure is a tree where each file is a leaf node and each subdirectory is an internal node.
So all you have to do is,
- Get the list of files/folders in a directory with a function such as:
void getFilesFolders(vector<string> & dir_list, const string & folder_name)
- If it's a directory, go to 1 with the directory name
- If it's a file, terminate if it's the file you're looking for, else move on to the next file.
Solution 3
You can use Directory
class members to do this with C# or managed C++. See the following MSDN article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307009
If you wish to use C++ with MFC you can use CFileFind
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f33e1618%28v=VS.80%29.aspx
You'll have to supply your own browse window to present the file system tree.
Or you can use one of the directory/file controls to do both for you.
Solution 4
boost::filesystem can be a cross-platform solution for that (check out for such functions in it).
Solution 5
#include <Windows.h>
#include <iostream>
int FindF(char* pDirectory)
{
char szFindPath[MAX_PATH] = {0};
strcpy(szFindPath, pDirectory);
strcat(szFindPath, "\\*");
WIN32_FIND_DATA file;
HANDLE search_handle=FindFirstFile(szFindPath,&file);
if (search_handle)
{
do
{
if(file.dwFileAttributes == FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
{
strcpy(szFindPath, pDirectory);
strcat(szFindPath, "\\");
strcat(szFindPath, file.cFileName);
FindF(szFindPath);
}
std::wcout << file.cFileName << std::endl;
}while(FindNextFile(search_handle,&file));
CloseHandle(search_handle);
}
}
blood
Updated on July 28, 2020Comments
-
blood almost 4 years
i need a way to search the computer for files like Windows Explorer. i want my program to search lets say hard drive c:. i need it to search C:\ for folders and files (just the ones you could see in c:\ then if the user clicks on a file on the list like the folder test (C:\test) it would search test and let the user see what files/folders are in it.