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Questions tagged [get-childitem]

Get-ChildItem is a powershell cmdlet that gets the items and child items in one or more specified locations.

Get-ChildItem is a powershell cmdlet that gets the items and child items in one or more specified locations. If the item is a container, it gets the items inside the container, known as child items. You can use the Recurse parameter to get items in all child containers.

A location can be a file system location, such as a directory, or a location exposed by a different Windows PowerShell provider, such as a registry hive or a certificate store.

Output

  • System.Object
    The type of object that Get-ChildItem returns is determined by the objects in the provider drive path.

  • System.String
    If you use the Name parameter, Get-ChildItem returns the object names as strings.

403 questions
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Limiting Powershell Get-ChildItem by File Creation Date Range

I use a Powershell command to generate a CSV report of certain file types. My goal is to find out how many were added during a particular date range. Right now, the script finds everything and I sort by date to find my number. I'd like to modify the…
Nathan
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How can Get-ChildItem be tested for no results (zero files)?

I'm stumped here on what seems to be a simple problem; so sorry for any bone-headed-ness over here. I have script that cleans up defunct backup files. After identifying the files I loop over and print out what's being dumped. My problem arises…
EBarr
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Get-ChildItem and non-breaking space

While working on my file servers, I have noticed one strange folder that broke my script. Folder has name consisting of only one character with ascii value 160 (non-breaking space, NBSP). Visually that name is the same as space character. Briefly, I…
Igor
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Use PowerShell to generate a list of files and directories

I'm writing a PowerShell script to make several directories and copy a bunch of files together to "compile" some technical documentation. I'd like to generate a manifest of the files and directories as part of the readme file, and I'd like…
YetAnotherRandomUser
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Combine the results of two distinct Get-ChildItem calls into single variable to do the same processing on them

I'm trying to write a PowerShell script to build a list of files, from several directories. After all directories have been added to the main list, I'd like to do the same processing on all files. This is what I have: $items = New-Object…
Nate
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How to find files in directories with certain name using Get-ChildItem?

I have a project folder called topfolder and I want to find all files in all subfolders that match a certain pattern, e.g. when the folder contains foo anywhere in its name, I want to list all files inside it. I tried something like: gci .\topfolder…
Borek Bernard
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Adding the file sizes of Get-ChildItem listing

My goal is to figure out how much space all images on my network drives are taking up. So my command to retrieve a list of all images is this: Get-ChildItem -recurse -include *jpg,*bmp,*png \\server01\folder Then I would like to just retrieve…
user2517266
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Powershell Get-ChildItem -Filter operates differently to Where clause with same value

I have a folder on a server called MyFolder. There are additional folders called MyFolder.1, MyFolder.2, MyFolder.3 etc. If I run: gci C:\Sample | ? { $_.Name -like "MyFolder.*" } I get the expected output: Directory: C:\Sample Mode …
Kieranties
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How to use wildcards with directories in PowerShell's Get-ChildItem -Exclude cmdlet

For a simple example, let's say I have a folder, Root, with three folders in it; Folder1, Folder2, and Folder3. Each of these folders (including Root) has a bunch of files in them, including .pdb files. I want to use the PowerShell Get-ChildItem…
deadlydog
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Confused with -Include parameter of the Get-ChildItem cmdlet

From documentation: -Include Retrieves only the specified items. The value of this parameter qualifies the Path parameter. Enter a path element or pattern, such as "*.txt". Wildcards are permitted. The Include parameter is effective only…
alex2k8
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Is Get-ChildItem -Recurse broken when there are square brackets in the input path?

OK, so I feel like this must be a bug in PowerShell, but I wanted to see if you guys think this sounds broken. It's quite an easy thing to reproduce, but I can see why it might not be a particularly common use case. The steps I've put below aren't…
Richard Irons
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Locating all subdirectories matching a string or partial string

I basically need to set a variable to a folder path without knowing the full path. My issue is I need to find a directory called "DirA" for example. But this directory could either be located in "DirB\" or "DirB\DirC" and sometimes the directory…
Dewi Jones
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How to write a PowerShell function to get directories?

Using PowerShell I can get the directories with the following command: Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Include "obj" -Recurse | ` Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer } I would prefer to write a function so the command is more readable. For…
Tim Murphy
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select second or third object / element

I want to select the second/third/forth object of a Get-ChildItem statement in my PowerShell script. This gives me the first: $first = Get-ChildItem -Path $dir | Sort-Object CreationTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 1 This…
Tobi123
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Get-ChildItem and Copy-Item explanation

Why does gci $from -Recurse | copy-item -Destination $to -Recurse -Force -Container not behave in the same way as copy-item $from $to -Recurse -Force ? I think it should be the same, but somehow it's not. Why?
Dejan Dakić
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