Directory.CreateDirectory($@"C: \Users\{ username}\") creates a folder name with pure whitespaces

[lifengl]

It is reported by a customer when there is a typo in the code. Running the code would create a folder inside the current running dictionary in C: with pure whitespace characters, which doesn't work with Windows explorer and other tools.

This is different from the behavior of the code in NET Framework. Although this might be a valid name in NTFS, not sure whether it is an expected behavior here.

[danmoseley]

Specifically

Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(@"c:\foo");
Directory.CreateDirectory($@"c: \oops")

(with space after C:) creates a folder named c:\foo\ (single space)

[Clockwork-Muse]

Side note, why are they manually creating what appear to be user directories?

[danmoseley]

Good question, it would be easy to get the ACL's wrong (besides the question of why)

[Clockwork-Muse]

Maybe they really wanted the directory to really match the username? I know mine doesn't match (missing the last 3 characters - r0_).

[danmoseley]

Right, but Windows would keep using the old one. Anyway, this is off topic I guess 😸

[lifengl]

I guess the customer has their product name after the user name portion, but cut that part out from the repro before sending it to us.

[Clockwork-Muse]

@lifengl - Possibly, but then they should be using Environment.GetFolderPath (usually, providing Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData). Of particular note, C:\ isn't guaranteed to be the drive the user directory is (solely) located on. Also, using it (and creating the full path via Path.Join) would have prevented the issue shown here....

[lifengl]

Well... i guess their one line console app product is too complicated to do all things correctly ;)

Frankly, those discussions are off the topic. If it is used to triage, well.. let say the invalid path might come from a mistake when the end user sets environment variable '$Home', if their product comes from unix. Or it can be a typo, in an output path inside a msbuild file, or maybe it is coming from a dialog, where the end user input the path to save their data. So it can come from all places.

[Eli-Black-Work]

I ran into this the other day: A game that I was running managed to create a directory with a pure-whitespace name. When I tried to delete it via Windows Explorer, Explorer just threw up an error 🙂 Must be very confusing for normal Windows users, haha.