Creating a temporary directory in Windows?

Question

What's the best way to get a temp directory name in Windows? I see that I can use GetTempPath and GetTempFileName to create a temporary file, but is there any equivalent to the Linux / BSD mkdtemp function for creating a temporary directory?

Answer 1

No, there is no equivalent to mkdtemp. The best option is to use a combination of GetTempPath and GetRandomFileName.

You would need code similar to this:

public string GetTemporaryDirectory()
{
    string tempDirectory = Path.Combine(Path.GetTempPath(), Path.GetRandomFileName());

    if(File.Exist(tempDirectory)) {
        return GetTemporaryDirectory();
    } else {
        Directory.CreateDirectory(tempDirectory);
        return tempDirectory;
    }
}