How to find my programs directory

Hi .
use this cod

Application.StartupPath.ToString

such as this , on form_load :

MsgBox(Application.StartupPath.ToString, MsgBoxStyle.OkOnly, "Application Directory is")

Answering the additional question asked by OP in the comment to the question:

The user have directories associated with their profiles; and also there is a similar directory for "all users". This is all called "special directories" ("folders"). Get them using System.Environment.GetFolderPath:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/14tx8hby.aspx[^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.specialfolder.aspx[^].

The current directory, System.Environment.CurrentDirectory is something completely different:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.environment.currentdirectory.aspx[^].

It's important to understand that you should never rely on any particular current directory even it your application never change this property value. It entirely depends on how the user starts the application. It can be absolutely anything. By default, it simply depends on the current directory of the parent process (quite typically, some file manager, such as Windows Explorer) and also on the parameter of a .LNK file is one is used. That's why this property is not often used in good software. It's more typical that an application (especially a console application) uses the files from the current directory, whatever it is, but in a way agnostic to what is that directory, simply by using relative path names supplied by user (in a command line or whatever).

I think, now you are pretty well armed with the knowledge on directories relevant to your application during run time. :-)

—SA

Sergey has some good links, you should review them.

Another option for finding the path of your programs file is to use the "My" Namespace
Like this to get the path to the Program for where it was started from.

Dim CurrentLocation As String
CurrentLocation = My.Computer.FileSystem.CurrentDirectory

As far as the Current User Directory.

There is no Special Folder in System.Environment.SpecialFolder for the C:\Users\[Current User] in .Net 3.5
I generally did something like this

Dim CurUser As String
CurUser = System.Environment.UserName
Dim fullPath As String = "C:\Users\" & CurUser
MsgBox(fullPath)

There are two problems with this way that I can think of at the moment.
If the Username was changed then it will not match the name that is mapped to the folder It will be the name that the account was originally created with.
In my test case the original name would be something like "B", When it should have been "Bill" So the folder maps to "B" and the user name is "Bill".
If you use this on Vista or higher it will work. If you try and use it on XP then it will fail because of the path difference in XP and Vista.You would also need to add code to detect what OS you are on to Use the Correct Path For the Correct OS.


In order to get around the those problems of the username changed and OS Version I just came up with this.(watch the word wrap here)

Dim userpath As String
userpath = System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments)
Dim trimmed() As String
trimmed = userpath.Split("\")

'create a new string with just the first parts leaving off the last backslash and the documents folder
Dim ns As String
ns = trimmed(0) & "\" & trimmed(1) & "\" & trimmed(2)

MsgBox(ns)

This code works on a (Vista) system that had the Username changed.
I also tested on a XP virtual machine and it works there too.
I hope this helps.