Is there a faster way than this to find all the files in a directory and all sub directories?

Question

I\'m writing a program that needs to search a directory and all its sub directories for files that have a certain extension. This is going to be used both on a local, and a

Answer 1

Try this iterator block version that avoids recursion and the Info objects:

public static IEnumerable GetFileList(string fileSearchPattern, string rootFolderPath)
{
    Queue pending = new Queue();
    pending.Enqueue(rootFolderPath);
    string[] tmp;
    while (pending.Count > 0)
    {
        rootFolderPath = pending.Dequeue();
        try
        {
            tmp = Directory.GetFiles(rootFolderPath, fileSearchPattern);
        }
        catch (UnauthorizedAccessException)
        {
            continue;
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < tmp.Length; i++)
        {
            yield return tmp[i];
        }
        tmp = Directory.GetDirectories(rootFolderPath);
        for (int i = 0; i < tmp.Length; i++)
        {
            pending.Enqueue(tmp[i]);
        }
    }
}

Note also that 4.0 has inbuilt iterator block versions (EnumerateFiles, EnumerateFileSystemEntries) that may be faster (more direct access to the file system; less arrays)