How to remove illegal characters from path and filenames?

Question

I need a robust and simple way to remove illegal path and file characters from a simple string. I\'ve used the below code but it doesn\'t seem to do anything, what am I miss

Answer 1

Here's a code snippet that should help for .NET 3 and higher.

using System.IO;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public static class PathValidation
{
    private static string pathValidatorExpression = "^[^" + string.Join("", Array.ConvertAll(Path.GetInvalidPathChars(), x => Regex.Escape(x.ToString()))) + "]+$";
    private static Regex pathValidator = new Regex(pathValidatorExpression, RegexOptions.Compiled);

    private static string fileNameValidatorExpression = "^[^" + string.Join("", Array.ConvertAll(Path.GetInvalidFileNameChars(), x => Regex.Escape(x.ToString()))) + "]+$";
    private static Regex fileNameValidator = new Regex(fileNameValidatorExpression, RegexOptions.Compiled);

    private static string pathCleanerExpression = "[" + string.Join("", Array.ConvertAll(Path.GetInvalidPathChars(), x => Regex.Escape(x.ToString()))) + "]";
    private static Regex pathCleaner = new Regex(pathCleanerExpression, RegexOptions.Compiled);

    private static string fileNameCleanerExpression = "[" + string.Join("", Array.ConvertAll(Path.GetInvalidFileNameChars(), x => Regex.Escape(x.ToString()))) + "]";
    private static Regex fileNameCleaner = new Regex(fileNameCleanerExpression, RegexOptions.Compiled);

    public static bool ValidatePath(string path)
    {
        return pathValidator.IsMatch(path);
    }

    public static bool ValidateFileName(string fileName)
    {
        return fileNameValidator.IsMatch(fileName);
    }

    public static string CleanPath(string path)
    {
        return pathCleaner.Replace(path, "");
    }

    public static string CleanFileName(string fileName)
    {
        return fileNameCleaner.Replace(fileName, "");
    }
}