Should I use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory or System.Environment.CurrentDirectory?

Question

I have two exe files in the same folder, I can run exe2 from a button in exe1. Today I was observing a customer over a remote (terminal services) session and exe2 failed to

Answer 1

I usually use something like:

            string AppPath = System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase);
            AppPath = AppPath.Replace("file:\\", "");

Answer 2

As I understand it, you should use BaseDirectory. CurrentDirectory could change over the course of the program's execution.

Answer 3

In Visual studio 2010 test projects, if you enable deployment option of Edit test settings, AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory points to the TestResults\Out folder(not bin\debug). Although, default setting point to bin\debug folder.

Here I found convincing answer.

Why AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory not contains "bin" in asp.net app?

Answer 4

I have also been through this few days back, as I was using

Environment.CurrentDirectory

as it was giving me issue on the production server but was working fine with my local server,

So, I tried with

System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;

And it worked for me in both the Environment.

So, As all of them has said We should always go with

System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;

as it checks the Current Domain directory for the path.

have a look for more information

Could not find a part of path error on server

Answer 5

You should use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory.

For example in a windows services application:

System.Environment.CurrentDirectory will return C:\Windows\system32

While

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory will return [Application.exe location]

Another important factor to note is that AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory is a readonly property while the Environment.CurrentDirectory can be something else if necessary:

// Change the directory to AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory
Environment.CurrentDirectory = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;   

Answer 6

AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory returns the directory from where the current application domain was loaded.
System.Environment.CurrentDirectory returns the current system directory.
In your case AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory is the best solution.