Compare paths & ignoring case of drive letter

Question

I'm checking 2 program config file paths from the registry. Sometimes one gets stored with a lowercase c, the other with an uppercase C which then doesn't work with a simple string comparison.

What I want to accomplish is basically that

"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" == "c:\MyPath\MyConfig.json"

But

"C:\MyPath\myconfig.json" != "C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json"

//Edit: I just noticed windows is not case sensitive at all, so latter codeblock is not even required. Sorry, i should have checked that in first place, but i always thought windows is case sensitive in paths, but it's indeed not it seems.

Is there something like Path.Compare(p1, p2) or is the only way to do that manually?

Answer 1

You can use String.Equals() to compare two pathes (strings).

The following returns true:

var equal = String.Equals(@"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json", @"c:\MyPath\MyConfig.json", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase); //or StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase

UPDATE (after question update)

You should compare root and rest part of string:

var path1 = @"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json";
var path2 = @"c:\MyPath\myConfig.json";
    
var rootEqual = String.Equals(Path.GetPathRoot(path1), Path.GetPathRoot(path2), StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase); // true

var withoutRootEqual = String.Equals(path1.Substring(Path.GetPathRoot(path1).Length), path2.Substring(Path.GetPathRoot(path2).Length)); //false

var equal = rootEqual && withoutRootEqual;

Using this approach the results are:

"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" && "C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" -> true
"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" && "c:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" -> true
"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" && "C:\MyPath\myConfig.json" -> false
"C:\MyPath\MyConfig.json" && "c:\MyPath\myConfig.json" -> false

Note: this will work on Windows only because root in Linux is different, but needed result can be achieved by the similar way.