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

A bit late to the question, but I just needed this feature as well. I agree with DavidK that since there is a built-in API function that provides this, you should use it. Here's a managed wrapper for it:

public static string GetRelativePath(string fromPath, string toPath)
{
    int fromAttr = GetPathAttribute(fromPath);
    int toAttr = GetPathAttribute(toPath);

    StringBuilder path = new StringBuilder(260); // MAX_PATH
    if(PathRelativePathTo(
        path,
        fromPath,
        fromAttr,
        toPath,
        toAttr) == 0)
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("Paths must have a common prefix");
    }
    return path.ToString();
}

private static int GetPathAttribute(string path)
{
    DirectoryInfo di = new DirectoryInfo(path);
    if (di.Exists)
    {
        return FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY;
    }

    FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(path);
    if(fi.Exists)
    {
        return FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL;
    }

    throw new FileNotFoundException();
}

private const int FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY = 0x10;
private const int FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL = 0x80;

[DllImport("shlwapi.dll", SetLastError = true)]
private static extern int PathRelativePathTo(StringBuilder pszPath, 
    string pszFrom, int dwAttrFrom, string pszTo, int dwAttrTo);