Well, seems that it would throw an exception when the Directory.CreateDirectory call is made, in that the it is  called only if the directory for the settings already exists.

The "correct" version might be something like this:

if (!Directory.Exists(Config.SettingsDirectory))

                    {

                          Directory.CreateDirectory(Config.SettingsDirectory);

                    }

DC

Is it really this simple? Is this creating a directory "if" it exists, rather than if it does not?

All potential outcomes are bad for this code. If the directory exists, the code would try to create it again and get an exception. If the directory did not exist, the program would continue to run without having it's settings directory.

A healthy dose of test driven development woud stop this type of error dead in its tracks.

1) you don't get an exception if the dir already exists - that's one of the reasons why this bug can be hard to catch, since if the dir already exists, the code works fine.

2) this is a good reason to just call Directory.CreateDirectory and not bother with the if check, since there's a chance of screwing up said if check.  This is one of the reasons it doesn't throw if the dir already exists, so you can do exactly that.

Well, as jmanning points out, it should be just

static void Main(string[] args)

{

        Directory.CreateDirectory(Config.SettingsDirectory);

}

Otherwise, what do we know about Config.SettingsDirectory?  (Google reports that this is the only page on the internet that contains "Config.SettingsDirectory")

Escaping the backslahes in Config.SettingsDirectory?