How can I find the location of a file in the system path, like get-command or where?

Question

I want to find whether a certain DLL is available on the system path. in Powershell, I can use get-command myfile.dll , and in cmd I can use where myfile.dll .

How can I do that in C#? Do I have to manually parse Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("path") , or is there a better way?

Answer 1

Not sure about where , but Get-Command internally resolves the file location using the following algorithm (overly simplified):

1. Parse Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PATH")
2. Enumerate all files in each individual PATH entry with Directory.EnumerateFiles()
3. Perform a case-insensitive string comparison with the input file name against each file name in the directory