What is the best way to determine application root directory?

I need to get all dlls in my application root directory. What is the best way to do that?

string root = Application.StartupPath;

or

string root = new FileInfo(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location).FullName;

and after that

Directory.GetFiles(root, "*.dll");

Which way is better? Are there better ways?

From stackoverflow

• AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory is my go to way of doing so.

  However:

  Application.StartupPath gets the directory of your executable

  AppDomain.BaseDirectory gets the directory used to resolve assemblies

  Since they can be different, perhaps you want to use Application.StartupPath, unless you care about assembly resolution.

  BeowulfOF : Correct, I follow the same path ;-)

  faulty : Application.StartupPath will be effected by "Working Directory" if it's set in the exe shortcut, or the process is started from another apps. I didn't realized it until much later, which had cost me days of sleepless night to troubleshoot what went wrong.

• It depends. If you want the directory of the EXE that started the application, then either of your two examples will work. Remember though, that .NET is very flexible, and it could be that another application has linked to your EXE and is calling it, possibly from another directory.

  That doesn't happen very often and you would probably have written if it did, but it is a possibility. Because of that, I prefer to specify which assembly I am interested in and get the directory from that. Then I know that I am getting all of the DLLs in the same directory as that specific assembly. For example, if you have an application MyApp.exe with a class in it MyApp.MyClass, then you would do this;

  string root = string.Empty;
  Assembly ass = Assembly.GetAssembly( typeof( MyApp.MyClass ) );
  if ( ass != null )
  {
     root = ass.Location;
  }
  

  Bob : Nice variable naming

  Rob Prouse : I especially like determining my ass.Location ;D

  Steven Sudit : It requires two hands.

• Environment.CurrentDirectory