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

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 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