Notepad Path in VS2008

Question

In my application, I have defined the following:

public static readonly string NOTEPAD = "%windir%\\notepad.exe";

I can type in the text value of NOTEPAD into the Run command on my Win7 machine, and Notepad will open.

However, from within my Visual Studio C# project, the Write Line routine will fire every time:

  if (!File.Exists(NOTEPAD)) {
    Console.WriteLine("File Not Found: " + NOTEPAD);
  }

Does Visual Studio not understand %windir%?

Answer 1

Just have a closer Look at the Class Environment. The Environment Variable is SystemRoot, so you can use Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("windir") (or something like that)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.getenvironmentvariable.aspx

The console "Resolves" the %windir% environment variable to the correct path. You need to use the above function to do the same within your application.

Answer 2

When looking on my windows XP box, the location of notepad is:

%SystemRoot%\system32\notepad.exe

Not:

%windir%\notepad.exe

You also need to make sure that these environment variables are resolved correctly - use Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable and Path.Combine to build up the correct path:

string root = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("SystemRoot");
string path = Path.Combine(root, "system32", "notepad.exe");

Answer 3

Use Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("windir");

So you could declare it like this:

public static readonly string NOTEPAD = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("windir") + "\\notepad.exe";

Answer 4

Instead of expanding the variable manually as suggested by the other answers so far, you can have the Environment class do this for you just like the Run command does:

if (!File.Exists(Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables(NOTEPAD))) {
  Console.WriteLine("File Not Found: " + NOTEPAD);
}

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.expandenvironmentvariables.aspx