Regular Expressions Cookbook

7.19. Split Windows Paths into Their Parts

Problem

You want to check whether a string looks like a valid path to a folder or file on the Microsoft Windows operating system. If the string turns out to hold a valid Windows path, then you also want to extract the drive, folder, and filename parts of the path separately.

Solution

Drive letter paths

\A
(?<drive>[a-z]:)\\
(?<folder>(?:[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+\\)*)
(?<file>[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]*)
\Z

Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, PCRE 7, Perl 5.10, Ruby 1.9

\A
(?P<drive>[a-z]:)\\
(?P<folder>(?:[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+\\)*)
(?P<file>[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]*)
\Z

Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive

Regex flavors: PCRE 4 and later, Perl 5.10, Python

\A
([a-z]:)\\
((?:[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+\\)*)
([^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]*)
\Z

Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, PCRE, Perl, Python, Ruby

^([a-z]:)\\((?:[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+\\)*)([^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]*)$

Regex options: Case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, Java, JavaScript, PCRE, Perl, Python

Drive letter and UNC paths

\A
(?<drive>[a-z]:|\\\\[a-z0-9_.$]+\\[a-z0-9_.$]+)\\
(?<folder>(?:[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+\\)*)
(?<file>[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]*)
\Z

Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive

Regex flavors: .NET, PCRE 7, Perl 5.10, Ruby 1.9

\A
(?P<drive>[a-z]:|\\\\[a-z0-9_.$]+\\[a-z0-9_.$]+)\\
(?P<folder>(?:[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]+\\)*)
(?P<file>[^\\/:*?"<>|\r\n]*)
\Z

Regex options: Free-spacing, case insensitive

Regex flavors: PCRE 4 and later, Perl 5.10, Python

\A ([a-z]:|\\\\[a-z0-9_.$]+\\[a-z0-9_.$]+)\\ ...