Regex: Find Files and Directories from a Full Path

Posted on 2019-11-11

Regex for each delimiter

Summary	Windows	Unix
File name	`[^\\]+$`	`[^/]+$`
Directories	`^.*\\`	`^.*/`
Since a specific directory	`directory.*$`	`directory.*$`
After a specific directory	`(?<=directory\\).*$`	`(?<=directory/).*$`
Until a specific directory	`^.*directory\\`	`^.*directory/`
Before a specific directory	`.*\\(?=directory)`	`.*/(?=directory)`

Examples

Suppose you have this text.

C:\Users\regex\Documents\foo.txt
C:\Users\regex\Documents\bar\baz.txt
C:\Users\regex\Documents\qux\qux\qux.txt

Delete only the file name from the full path

If you use [^\\]+$ to match only the file name and replace it with an empty string, you can extract only the directory path.

C:\Users\regex\Documents\
C:\Users\regex\Documents\bar\
C:\Users\regex\Documents\qux\qux\

Delete only the directory from the full path

If you use ^.*\\ to match only the directory and replace it with an empty string, you can extract only the file name.

foo.txt
baz.txt
qux.txt

Delete only until a specific directory from the full path

If you use ^.*Documents\\ to match only until a specific directory and replace it with an empty string, you can extract only after a specific directory.

foo.txt
bar\baz.txt
qux\qux\qux.txt