Powershell get top parent folder - powershell

Question

My ultimate goal is to get a list of top level folders (for a given path) where a file has been modified in the last day.
There are probably a lot of ways to do this. The place where I am having a problem is getting the top level folder only.
Here is what I have so far:
Get-ChildItem -Path "c:\data\*" -recurse |
where-object {$_.lastwritetime -gt (get-date).addDays(-1)} |
where-object {-not $_.PSIsContainer} |
Foreach-Object { $_.DirectoryName} |
sort -unique
It gets all the directories though, not just the top level.

Answer 1

Here's how I would do it
$dirs = dir "sometoplevelpath" |?{ $_.PsIsContainer }
$oneDayAgo = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
$dirs |?{ dir $_ -Recurse |?{!$_.PsIsContainer -and $_.LastWriteTime -gt $oneDayAgo } | select -first 1 }

Answer 2

You could take the list of folders that you end up with and compare their full path without their name and see if it matches the directory that contains the folders you're interested in:
$folders | Where-Object {$_.FullName.Replace($_.Name,"") -eq $superDirectory}
Where $superdDirectory is the name of the directory that contains the "top level directories". In this case, that sounds like "C:\".
You could also investigate the PSParentPath property.
Another method would be to make a list of potential backup folders first:
$targetFolders = Get-Item -Path "C:\data*" | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer}
And then go through that list to see if they have any items that need backing up, taking action if they do.
$targetFolders | % {
$folderItems = Get-ChildItem $_.FullName | ? {.... use your filter here}
if (($folderItems | Measure-Object).Count -gt 0){
#Backup the folder, or add $_.FullName to the list of folders that should be backed up.
}
}

Answer 3

Try removing the -recurse
Get-ChildItem -Path "c:\data*" | where-object {$_.lastwritetime -gt (get-date).addDays(-1)} | where-object {-not $_.PSIsContainer} | Foreach-Object {$_.DirectoryName} | sort -unique
I also changed the $. to $_.. See if this works. I got it to give me only the top level directory names, but I don't have anything I can run as a pattern like "c\data*"