I have problem with path. I need to copy all files from directory I add as 1st parameter in Powershell command.
Now I have:
Copy-Item -Path "$args[0]/" -Filter*.*
So it will copy to location I am now (and it's ok, I don't want other location) but it doesn't copy anything. Please help.
Pretty sure the issue is that the 0 element in $args is not expanding in the string creating an invalid path. Wrap the variable in $() to allow it to expand inside a double quoted string. Else you would end up trying to copy the folder C:\TEST[0]/ which obviously is not correct.
Copy-Item -Path "$($args[0])/" -Filter *.* -Recurse
Not yet sure why you have a forward slash in there since Windows pathing uses backslashes.
function Copy-Something(){
test-Path "$($args[0])/"
test-path "$($args[0])"
}
Copy-Something C:\temp
With what little you have provided the output shows that it might be redundant to have the slash there. Would also recommend calling Test-Path on the argument anyway as it might have caught this for you.
True
True
From Question Comment
You are looking for the -Recurse parameter if you also want folder contents.
From Answer Comment
If you want the contents and not the folder you should be able to do something like this:
Copy-Item -Path "$($args[0])\*" -Filter *.* -Recurse
When in doubt, Get-Help Command.
PS C:\> Get-Help Copy-Item -ShowWindow
-------------------------- EXAMPLE 3 --------------------------
This command copies the contents of the C:\Logfiles directory
to the C:\Drawings\Logs directory. It creates the \Logs
subdirectory if it does not already exist.
Windows PowerShell
PS C:\> Copy-Item C:\Logfiles -Destination C:\Drawings\Logs -Recurse
Related
I am trying to use powershell to update some programs for my company. I am writing a script to do so (as instructed). When I install the new version of the program on the machines, it also requires me to 'upgrade' existing folders to match the new version of the software.
I need to find all of the folders that contain a certain hidden folder(let the name of said folder be .blah). I am trying to use the get-childitem command, with -path [drives to check] -Recurse -Directory -Force -EA SilentlyContinue. However, I am not sure how to filter correctly to only find folders that contain the .blah folder inside of it.
Help would be very much appreciated.
Combine your Get-ChildItem call with a Where-Object call that tests for a child directory of a given name using Test-Path:
# Note: "." refers to the *current* directory
# Adjust as needed.
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath . -Recurse -Directory -Force -ErrorAction Ignore |
Where-Object {
Test-Path -ItemType Container -LiteralPath "$($_.FullName)\.blah"
}
The Get-ChildItem call outputs all directories (-Directory) in the entire directory subtree (-Recurse), including hidden ones (-Force), ignoring any errors (such as from lack of permissions, -ErrorAction Ignore).
The Where-Object call calls Test-Path to look for a .blah child directory (-ItemType Container) in the directory at hand ($_).
With a -LiteralPath argument, Test-Path finds the specified path if it exists, irrespective of whether the target file or directory is hidden.
By contrast, with a wildcard-based -Path argument, hidden items are not found, and given that, as of PowerShell 7.2.5, Test-Path has no -Force switch, there is no way to force their inclusion; this gap in functionality is the subject of GitHub issue #6501.
Note: In PowerShell (Core) 7+, you could simplify "$($_.FullName)\.blah" to "$_\.blah", because the [System.IO.DirectoryInfo] and [System.IO.FileInfo] instances output by Get-ChildItem and Get-Item there consistently stringify to their full path (.FullName) property, unlike in WindowsPowerShell, where they situationally stringify by their file/directory name only - see this answer.
Quite new to Powershell and scripting/programming and have a pretty basic problem I'm stuck with.
If I have a structure such as this:
Set-Location $PSScriptRoot
And do the following, I get the folders within the Logfiles folder:
$folders = Get-ChildItem -Directory -Path .\Logfiles -Recurse
If I then do the following I can see the first subfolder in "Logfiles"
$folders[0]
But now if I do the following, it seems to be using the "Scripts" folder instead of "Logfiles" as a root folder:
Get-ChildItem $folders[0]
or
Get-ChildItem .\Logfiles\$folders[0]
...(gives a null result)
Does anyone have any information on how directories work within powershell commands? I'm guessing I'm making a very basic mistake with handling the commands!!
Try
Get-ChildItem ".\Logfiles\$($folders[0].Name)"
Or
Get-ChildItem $folders[0].FullName
Or my favourite
$folders[0] | Get-ChildItem
PowerShell takes $folders[0] - which resolves to a [DirectoryInfo] object - and attempts to convert it to a string that it can bind to Get-ChildItem's -Path parameter.
But converting the directory object to a string results in just its name, the information about its location gets lost in the process.
Instead, you'll want to either do:
$folders[0] |Get-ChildItem
... which will cause PowerShell to correctly bind the full path of the directory object - or you can pass the full path as the argument to -Path:
Get-ChildItem $folders[0].FullName
All,
My intention is to copy all the files with starting with the name 'US.Services' and with the extension .dll from a directory and its sub directories to the place where the script is being executed, i have the following but nothing gets copied. Any help would be appreciated.
Get-Childitem -Path ".\.\" -Filter *US.Services*.dll -Recurse |
Copy-Item -Destination "."
Thanks -Nen
Since PowerShell v3 can use the $PSScriptRoot automatic variable to refer to the location where the script is saved (in PowerShell v2 that would be $here = $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path | Split-Path.
Be aware the both those approaches work only when the script is executed, if you just paste them to PowerShell console they won't return any value.
If I understand your question correctly you look for files that start with the given string and end with the extension, so you need to use the * wildcard here: US.Services*.dll.
Get-Childitem -Path $PSScriptRoot -Recurse -Filter "US.Services*.dll" |
Copy-Item -Destination $PSScriptRoot
This will likely produce exceptions if there are files with the same name copied to the single directory, as two files cannot be named the same within single directory.
I am trying to write a Powershell command to identify and copy only text (.txt) files from within a directory and sub-directories of that directory. Does anyone know if there is a command that can perform this task.
If you're not worried about maintaining the directory structure you could use
Get-ChildItem *.txt -recurse | Copy-Item -destination c:\qwerty
If you would like to maintain the directory structure you could use
Copy-Item -Recurse -Filter *.txt -path c:\temp -destination c:\asdf
NB.
The PowerShell get-help command is very useful and it does except wildcards.
ie
get-help *copy* gives you a list of commands that might be useful to you.
get-help Copy-Item -full gives you all the parameters plus examples of usage.
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 when the command
includes the Recurse parameter or the
path leads to the contents of a
directory, such as C:\Windows*, where
the wildcard character specifies the
contents of the C:\Windows directory.
My first understanding was:
c:\test\a.txt
c:\test\b.txt
So to get 'a.txt' and 'b.txt' I can write:
gci -Path "c:\test\*" -Include "*.txt"
And this works. But now consider such hierarchy:
c:\test\a.txt
c:\test\b.txt
c:\test\c.txt\c.txt
The same command returns:
a.txt, b.txt, c.txt
The actual logic seems to be:
-Include used to match all entities specified by -Path. If matched element
is a file - return it. If matched
element is a folder, look inside and
return matching first level children.
Also, the documentation say:
The Include parameter is effective only when the command
includes the Recurse parameter or the
path leads to the contents of a
directory...
This is wrong as well. E.g.
gci -Path "c:\test" -Include "*.txt"
It returns nothing, while without -Include I get folder content. So -Include is definitely "effective". What really happens here? The -Path specify the "c:\test", and the -Include tries to match this path. As "*.txt" does not match "test", so nothing returned. But look at this:
gci -Path "c:\test" -Include "*t"
It returns a.txt, b.txt and c.txt as "*t" matched "test" and matched all child items.
After all, even knowing how Include works now, I don't understand when to use it. Why do I need it look to inside subfolders? Why should it be so complex?
You're confusing the use of -include. The -include flag is applied to the path, not the contents of the path. Without the use of the recursive flag, the only path that is in question is the path you specify. This is why the last example you gave works, the path c:\test has a t in the path and hence matches "*t".
You can verify this by trying the following
gci -path "c:\test" -in *e*
This will still produce all of the children in the directory yet it matches none of their names.
The reason that -include is more effective with the recurse parameter is that you end up applying the wildcard against every path in the hierarchy.
Try the -filter parameter (it has support for only one extension):
dir -filter *.txt
Tacking on to JaredPar's answer, in order to do pattern matching with Get-ChildItem, you can use common shell wildcards.
For example:
get-childitem "c:\test\t?st.txt"
where the "?" is a wildcard matching any one character or
get-childitem "c:\test\*.txt"
which will match any file name ending in ".txt".
This should get you the "simpler" behavior you were looking for.
I just asked a similar question and got three quick replies concerning the Get-Help for Get-ChildItem.
The answer is in the full description
of the command (Get-Help Get-ChildItem
-full):
The Include parameter is effective only when the command includes the
Recurse parameter or the path leads to
the contents of a directory, such as
C:\Windows*, where the wildcard
character specifies the contents of
the C:\Windows directory.
So the following would work without
recurse.
PS C:\foo> Get-childitem -path
"c:\foo*" -Include *.txt
From Stack Overflow question PowerShell Scripting - Get-ChildItem.
I hope this helps :-)
Including \* at the end of the path should work around the issue
PS C:\logfiles> Get-ChildItem .\* -include *.log
This should return .log files from the current working directory (C:\logfiles)
Alex's example above indicates that a directory with the name foo.log would also be returned. When I tried it, it wasn't but it's 6 years later and that could be from PS updates.
However, you can use the child item Mode to exclude directories I think.
PS C:\logfiles> Get-Childitem .\* -include *.log | where-object {$_.mode -notmatch "d"}
This should exclude anything with the 'directory' mode set.
get-childitem -include only works with -recursive or a wildcard in the path. I consider this a bug [Thought it was different in PS 6].