I'm trying to come up with a way in order to quickly remove multiple files that are in similar child directories. I need to accomplish the removals quickly to several domain controllers so they don't replicate and replace the deleted files.
The file paths vary slightly but enough and I was hoping to use wildcards (*) to cut down the six possible path variations to only two.
something along these lines:
The {} actually exist since they are hash values
C:\Windows\SYSVOL\domain\Policies\{*}\User*\Script\Logon\abc*
C:\Windows\SYSVOL\sysvol\xxxx\Policies\{*}\User*\Script\Logon\abc*
Initially I was thinking along the lines of using a recursive select-string search and pipe it to remove-item but I was getting an access denial error when i was just hypothesizing the search without the pipe to remove-item.
gci -path C:\Windows\SYSVOL\ -rec | select-string -pattern "domain\Policies\{*}\User*\Script\Logon\abc*
and
gci -path C:\Windows\SYSVOL\ -rec | select-string -pattern "sysvol\xxxx\Policies\{*}\User*\Script\Logon\abc*" | remove-item $_
(the remove-item is basically pseudo code)
I tried delimiting the {'s and 's but that didn't work either.
Once I have this working in theory I would then need to use the invoke-command to try to get this removal process to work its way through the list of systems that need this operation.
I don't know if this is the right approach / best approach, or if it is even doable.
Any advise would be greatly appreciated.
Related
I'm working on a project where I have to apply a file to multiple folders every so often. I'm trying to learn some PowerShell commands to make this a little easier. I came up with the following script, which works, but I feel that this is too verbose and could be distilled down with a better script:
[string]$sourceDirectory = "C:\Setup\App Folder Files\*"
# Create an array of folders
$destinationDirectories = #(
'C:\Users\GG_RCB1\Documents\',
'C:\Users\GG_RCB2\Documents\',
'C:\Users\LA_RCB1\Documents\',
'C:\Users\PR_RCB1\Documents\',
'C:\Users\PQ_RCB1\Documents\',
'C:\Users\PQ_RCB2\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB1\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB2\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB3\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB4\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB5\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB6\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB7\Documents\',
'C:\Users\XC_RCB8\Documents\')
# Perform iteration to create the same file in each folder
foreach ($i in $destinationDirectories) {
Copy-item -Force -Recurse -Verbose $sourceDirectory -Destination $i
}
I go into this process knowing that every folder in the User folder area is going to have the same format: _RCB<#>\Documents\
I know that I can loop through those files using this code:
Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Users'| where-object {$_.Name -match "^[A-Z][A-Z]_RCB"}
What I'm not sure how to do is to how, within that loop, drill down to the Documents folder and do the copy. I want to avoid having to keep updating the array from the first code sample, particularly when I know the naming convention of the subfolders in the Users folder. I'm just looking for a cleaner way to do this.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Ehh, I'll go ahead and post what I had in mind as well. Not to take away from #Mathias suggestion in the comments, but to offer my solution, here's my take:
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\users\[A-Z][A-Z]_RCB*\documents" |
Copy-Item -Path $sourceDirectory -Destination { $_.FullName } -Recurse -WhatIf
Since everyone loves the "One-Liners" that can accomplish your needs. Get-ChildItem accepts wildcard-expressions in it's path which let's us accomplish this in one go. Given that your directories are...
consistent with the same naming pattern,
[A-Z][A-Z]_*
and the folder destination is the same.
Documents
Luckily, Copy-Item also has some cool features on it's own such as being able to use a script block that will allow the passing of $_.FullName property as it's destination, while they are passed down the pipeline one at a time.
Remove the -WhatIf common parameter when you've dictated the results are what you're after.
If I execute:
Get-ChildItem *.ext -recurse
the output consists of a series of Directory sections followed by one or more columns of info for each matching file separated by said directory sections. Is there something like the Unix find command? In which each matching file name appears on a single line with its full relative path?
Get-Childitem by default outputs a view for format-table defined in a format xml file somewhere.
get-childitem | format-table
get-childitem | format-list *
shows you the actual properties in the objects being output. See also How to list all properties of a PowerShell object . Then you can pick and choose the ones you want. This would give the full pathname:
get-childitem | select fullname
If you want an output to be just a string and not an object:
get-childitem | select -expand fullname
get-childitem | foreach fullname
Resolve-Path with the -Relative switch can be used to display the relative paths of a set of paths. You can collect the full path names (FullName property) from the Get-ChildItem command and use the member access operator . to grab the path values only.
Resolve-Path -Path (Get-ChildItem -Filter *.ext -Recurse).FullName -Relative
Note: The relative paths here only accurately reflect files found within the current directory (Get-ChildItem -Path .), i.e. Get-ChildItem -Path NotCurrentDirectory could have undesirable results.
Get-ChildItem's -Name switch does what you want:
It outputs the relative paths (possibly including subdir. components) of matching files as strings (type [string]).
# Lists file / dir. paths as *relative paths* (strings).
# (relative to the input dir, which is implicitly the current one here).
Get-ChildItem -Filter *.ext -Recurse -Name
Note that I've used -Filter, which significantly speeds up the traversal.
Caveat: As of PowerShell 7.0, -Name suffers from performance problems and behavioral quirks; see these GitHub issues:
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/9014
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/9119
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/9126
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/9122
https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/9120
I am having some problem passing the path plus filename to a parser. There are about 90 files of 1 GB each involved in my task. Each of the file is contained in a folder of its own. All of the folders are contained under a parent folder.
Goal: Ideally, I would like to parse 20 files simultaneously for multitasking and continue to the next 20 until all 90 files are done.
This would mean that I would like to spawn some concurrent parsing of 20 files in a batch at any one given time. In carrying out the parsing, I would like to use measure-command to time the work from beginning to finish.
Script I have used:
Get-ChildItem –Path "E:\\OoonaFTP\\input\\Videos3\\" -Filter *.mp4 -recurse | select -expand fullname
Foreach-Object {
Measure-Command { "E:\OoonaFTP\Ooona_x64_ver_2.5.13\OoonaParser.exe -encode -dat -drm $_.FullName" } | Select-Object -Property TotalSeconds
}
===============================
I have this working batch script with a for statement but doing each iteration one after another. This is not what is the ideal case though. I would really like to accomplish this in PowerShell and with simultaneous tasks.
Could someone please suggest some ways by which I could accomplish this?
Thank you very much!
Thanks for the various suggestions. I'm curious that some of them lead to empty output in my Powershell (PSVersion: 5.1.18362.145).
I tried a number of these and, inspired by some of them, found the best answer for my case at the moment:
Get-ChildItem *.ext -recurse | Select-Object -property fullname
(When I made the window wide enough I got all the info I needed; in general I suppose I might need to do more to get the formatting I want.)
I'm trying to use GCI with the Recurse argument to get a list of all files WITHIN the subfolders of a specified path.
I'm using the following line:
gci 'C:\temp\TestRecurse\*\*' -Recurse
Underneath the TestRecurse folder, I have the following:
TestRecurse
|---b.txt
|---dir1
|------a.txt
I expect a.txt to be returned. However, I'm getting a.txt and b.txt. Stranger still to me, if I put a.txt into another subfolder:
TestRecurse
|---b.txt
|---dir1
|------dir2
|---------a.txt
The same statement above only returns a.txt. I'm baffled as to how messing with the location of a.txt changes when b.txt is returned. Can someone explain to me why this happens, and why b.txt is ever returned at all?
Update
I should mention, while they're appreciated, I'm not necessarily looking for a workaround. This is part of a larger script in our environment that is in charge of moving files around in various ways while trying stay flexible. It's not behaving as I expected it would, so I'm trying to understand why it's working the way it is. As pointed out by PetSerAl, understanding Get-ChildItem may be more trouble than it's worth.
Thanks!
You're including a wildcard for the parent directory (TestRecurse\*), so you are getting files contained in it as well. Try getting the folder list of the TestRecurse, then iterating through them.
Structure:
TestRecurse\b.txt
TestRecurse\dir1
TestRecurse\dir1\a.txt
Code:
Get-ChildItem 'C:\tmp\TestRecurse\' | ` # Get the list of items within TestRecurse
? {$_.PSIsContainer} | ` # Filter items that are folders
% {Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse} # Iterate through and get all items within those folders
This only returns folders and files within dir1, but not dir1 itself.
I know this question was already asked by someone but I will ask again.
Can someone tell me how to rename in bulk and in ascending order if possible in CMD. I already tried renaming in powershell but to no avail. It only let me use once and I need to rename another folder files but to no avail. It didn't let it rename files in another folder. This is the code I use in powershell:
$i = 1
Get-ChildItem *.mkv | %{Rename-Item $_ -NewName ('Haikyuu - {0:D2}.mkv' -f $i++)}
I'm renaming my anime series per folder and some of my copies have 100+ videos. and somehow you could teach me what each code mean (the code that must use in CMD). The ones I've searched can't understand it in layman's term or doesn't tell the user how it's supposed to work. Thank you in advance. by the way, the folder is placed in an external drive.
so from the beginning:
$i= variable for storing the initial value 1
Get-ChildItem = is like "dir" which lists the files and folder under a certain path.
In this case, it is listing all the files which starts with anything but have the extension .mkv
* indicates wildcard.
| = pipeline which passes the output of the first command as an input of the next command.
% = ForEach-Object is iterating each object one by one coming from the pipeline.
$_= Current pipeline object . Here it is taking each object one by one and renaming it using Rename-Item
-NewName = is the parameter of the Rename-Item which asks for the new name to pass.
Hope it clarifies your need.
The reason why I can't rename my video files is there were [brackets] on the filename.
So I use this:
Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Include *.mkv | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name.replace("[","").replace("]","").replace("(","").replace(")","") }
Which on the same directories, I can access subfolders too to omit brackets and parethesis. then I proceed using the code above in the question to rename my files in every folder. The Reason why I'm doing the 'renaming' per folder is that, each folder is different anime series. but the code above is working.
if anyone can give me less code than repeating the 'replace' and concatenating it, I will gladly accept and choose that as the best answer. :)
If you use the parameter -LiteralPath for the source, no prior renaming is necessary.
%i = 1
Get-ChildItem *.mkv |
ForEach {Rename-Item -LiteralPath "$_" -NewName ('Haikyuu - {0:D2}.mkv' -f $i++)}
A hint on sorting, I hope the present numbering of the source files has a constant width, otherwise the result is mixed up as an alphabetic sort (which is inherent to ntfs formatted drives) will sort the number 10 in front of 2.
To check this append the parameter -whatif to the Rename-Item command
My main script run once gci on a specified drive via -path parameter , then it does multiple different tables from this output. Here below is a part of my script which does a specific table from an directory specified via -folder parameter, for example :
my-globalfunction -path d:\ -folder d:\folder
It work fine, but only for one entered folder path, the goal of this script is that user can enter multiple folders path and get a tables for each entered -folder parameter value, like this :
This clause in your Where-Object would be the issue:
$_.FullName.StartsWith($folder, [System.StringComparison]::OrdinalIgnoreCase)
The array of folders passed are most likely being cast as one long string which would never match. I had a regex solution posted but remembered a simpler way after looking at what your logic was trying to do.
Simpler Way
Even easier way is to put this information right into Get-ChildItem since it accepts string arrays for -Path. This way I don't think you even need to have 2 parameters since you never again use the results from $fol anyway. Based on the assumption that you were looking for all subfolders of $folder
$gdfolders = Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Recurse -Force | Where-Object{$_.psiscontainer}
That would return all subfolders of the paths provided. If you have PowerShell 3.0 or higher this would even be easier.
$gdfolders = Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Recurse -Force -Directory
Update from comments
The code you have displayed is incomplete which is what lead me to the solution that you see above. If you do use the variable $fol somewhere else that you do not show lets go back to my earlier regex solution which would work better in place with what you already have.
$regex = "^($(($folder | ForEach-Object{[regex]::Escape($_)}) -join "|")).+"
....
$gdfolders = $fol | Where-Object{($_.Attributes -eq "Directory") -and ($_.FullName -match $regex)}
What this will do is build a regex compare string with what I will assume is the logic of locate folders that begin with either of paths passed.
Using your example input of "d:\folder1", "d:\folder2" the variable $regex would work out to ^(d:\\folder1|d:\\folder2). The proper characters, like \, are escaped automatically by the static method [regex]::Escape which is applied to each element. We then use -join to place a pipe which, in this regex capture group means match whats on the left OR on the right. For completeness sake we state that the match has to occur at the beginning of the path with the caret ^ although this is most likely redundant. It would match paths that start with either "d:\folder1" or "d:\folder2". At the end of the regex string we have .+ which means match 1 to more characters. This should ensure we dont match the actual folder "d:\folder1" but meerly its children
Side Note
The quotes in the line with ’Size (MB)’ are not the proper ones which are '. If you have issues around that code consider changing the quotes.