PowerShell - Get-GhildItem - Ignore specific directory - powershell

Question

I am working with a script to clear old files off our file server. We are using this line in the script to find all files older than a certain date:
$oldFiles = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.lastwritetime -le $oldDate }
My question is, how do I ignore a certain directory in the $oldPath? For instance, if we had the following:
root
dir1
dir 2
subdir 1
subdir 2
dir 3
subdir 1
dir 4
And we want to ignore dir 2 and all subdirectories when building the list
Final working script:
$oldPath = "\\server\share"
$newDrive = "I:"
$oldDate = Get-Date -Date 1/1/2012
$oldFiles = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse -File | Where-Object {($_.PSParentPath -notmatch '\\Ignore Directory') -and $_.lastwritetime -le $oldDate }
$oldDirs = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.PSParentPath -notmatch '\\Ignore Directory')} | select-object FullName
$oldDirs = $oldDirs | select -Unique
foreach ($oldDir in $oldDirs) {
$strdir = $newDrive + "\" + ($oldDir | Split-Path -NoQualifier | Out-String).trim().trim("\")
if (!(Test-Path $strdir)) {
Write-Host "$strdir does not exist. Creating directory..."
mkdir $strdir | Out-Null
} # end if
} # end foreach
foreach ($file in $oldFiles) {
$strfile = $newDrive + "\" + ($file.FullName | Split-Path -NoQualifier | Out-String).trim().trim("\")
Write-Host "Moving $file.FullName to $strfile..."
Move-Item $file.FullName -Destination $strfile -Force -WhatIf
} # end foreach
$oldfiles | select pspath | Split-Path -NoQualifier | Out-File "\\nelson\network share\ArchivedFiles.txt"

Answer 1

Modify your Where-Object condition to:
... | Where-Object {($_.PSParentPath -notmatch '\\dir 2') -and ($_.lastWriteTime -le $oldDate)}
Also, you probably want to filter out directory items as well so that $oldFiles contains only files e.g.:
$oldFiles = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse | Where {!$_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.PSParentPath -notmatch '\\dir 2') -and ($_.lastWriteTime -le $oldDate)}
If you're on PowerShell v3 you can use a new parameter on Get-ChildItem to simplify this to:
$oldFiles = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse -File | Where {($_.PSParentPath -notmatch '\\dir 2') -and ($_.lastWriteTime -le $oldDate)}

Answer 2

Something like this should work:
$exclude = Join-Path $oldPath 'dir 2'
$oldFiles = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse | ? {
-not $_.PSIsContainer -and
$_.FullName -notlike "$exclude\*" -and
$_.LastWriteTime -le $oldDate
}

Answer 3

Try $oldFiles = Get-ChildItem $oldPath -Recurse -Exclude "dir 2" | Where-Object { $_.lastwritetime -le $oldDate}