C# change file name on DOS wildcards

Question

We have a .net program which essentially copies the files from one folder to another and , often, changes the files' names during the copying. The customer provide the file names to be copied & the target file names using DOS style wildcards.

For example:

Source: *.log Target: *.txt

Copy aa.log to aa.txt , bb2.1.log to bb2.1.txt etc

or

Source: abc*.csv Target: KK*_123.csv

Copy abcxyz.csv to KKabcxyz_123.csv, abc1722.mm.csv to KKabc1722.mm_123.csv

How can I implement such copying / renaming in C# or VB.net ?

File.Copy(SourceFile, TargetFile ) doesn't support wildcards (*,?) in the file names, so probably the question is, how to generate the target file name ?

PS If it's absolutely necessary I can enforce some limitations on the source / target file names, but I'd like to avoid it.

PPS If necessary, the process can be divided to the separate parts. Example #2 : Source: abc*.csv Target: KK*_123.csv

could be replaced with
Source: abc*.csv Target: KK*.csv

and Source: KK*.csv Target: *_123.csv

.

Answer 1

I'm not aware of a completely built-in solution, but .NET will do pattern matching for you. Directory.EnumerateFiles(string, string) accepts a pattern to match source files on. You could do something like

foreach (var sourceFile in Directory.EnumerateFiles(myPath, thePattern))
{
    var targetFile = ApplyPattern(sourceFile, thePattern);
    File.Copy(sourceFile, targetFile);
}

You would need to implement ApplyPattern yourself by examining the sourceFile found by EnumerateFiles and applying the placeholder logic.

Perhaps there is a better solution that I'm not aware of. If not, this at least will handle the source matching for you.