Sorting a list with paths by deepest directory

Hello.

I need to sort a list that contains paths (relative or absolute) so that the deepest path appears first, for example:

\New Folder\Item1\tools\1
\New Folder\Item1\tools
\New Folder\Item1
\New Folder
etc...

Is there an API in Path class I can use to do it?

Thanks! J.

From stackoverflow

• This is a bit out-of-the-box, but you could always do this:

  var sortedList = list.OrderByDescending(
      p => p.Count(c => c == Path.DirectorySeparatorChar
          || c == Path.AltDirectorySeparatorChar));
  

  That is, simply order by how often the path separator character appears.

  Cerebrus : This is how I would do it, too!

  Pasi Savolainen : This requires that all paths are absolute. Which is a good requirement since one never knows where the relative paths have been to.

  Matt Hamilton : Yeah, that's true - you may need to call Path.GetFullPath on each string and provide it with the "root" path that you know they all map to.

  hmemcpy : That works, but it would jumble the results if there is more than one root directory in the list.

• I assume those paths are strings, so why not just sort them in descending order?

  var paths = new List<string>
  {
    "\\New Folder",
    "\\New Folder\\tools",
    "\\Windows",
    "\\Windows\\System32",
    "\\New Folder\\tools\\1",
  };
  
  var result = paths.OrderByDescending(s => s);
  

  Or if they are in a string[] you can use:

  Array.Sort(paths);
  Array.Reverse(paths);
  

  Result is:

  \Windows\System32
  \Windows
  \New Folder\tools\1
  \New Folder\tools
  \New Folder