I am looking to copy files from a directory structure over to a new folder. I am not looking to preserve the file structure, just get the files. The file structure is such that there can be nested folders, but anything in a folder named 'old' I do not want moved over.
I made a couple attempts at it, but my powershell knowledge is very limited.
Example being where the current file structure exists:
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Example\*" -include "*.txt -Recurse |% {Copy-Item $_.fullname "C:\Destination\"}
This gives me all the files all I want, including all the files I don't want. I do not want to include any files that are in the 'old' folder. To note: there are multiple 'old' folders. I tried -exclude, but it looks like it only pertains to the file name, and I am not sure how to -exclude on a path name, while still copying the files.
Any help?
How about this:
C:\Example*" -include "*.txt -Recurse |
?{$_.fullname -notmatch '\\old\\'}|
% {Copy-Item $_.fullname "C:\Destination\"}
Exclude everything that has '\old\' anywhere in it's path.
If we sneak a little where-object into the pipeline I think you'll get what you seek. Each object that has a property named Directory (System.IO.FileInfo) with a property named Name with a value of old will not be passed to Copy-Item.
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Example*" -include *.txt -Recurse | ? {-not ($_.Directory.Name -eq "old")} | % {Copy-Item $_.fullname "C:\Destination\"}
(Untested)
Related
so trying to find a way to combine a couple of things the Stack Overflow crowd has helped me do in the past. So I know how to find folders with a specific name and move them where I want them to go:
$source_regex = [regex]::escape($sourceDir)
(gci $sourceDir -recurse | where {-not ($_.psiscontainer)} | select -expand fullname) -match "\\$search\\" |
foreach {
$file_dest = ($_ | split-path -parent) -replace $source_regex,$targetDir
if (-not (test-path $file_dest)){mkdir $file_dest}
move-item $_ -Destination $file_dest -force -verbose
}
And I also know how to find and delete files of a specific file extension within a preset directory:
Get-ChildItem $source -Include $searchfile -Recurse -Force | foreach{ "Removing file $($_.FullName)"; Remove-Item -force -recurse $_}
What I'm trying to do now is combine the two. Basically, I'm looking for a way to tell Powershell:
"Look for all folders named 'Draft Materials.' When you find a folder with that name, get its full path ($source), then run a command to delete files of a given file extension ($searchfile) from that folder."
What I'm trying to do is create a script I can use to clean up an archive drive when and if space starts to get tight. The idea is that as I develop things, a lot of times I go through a ton of incremental non-final drafts (hence folder name "Draft Materials"), and I want to get rid of the exported products (the PDFs, the BMPs, the AVIs, the MOVs, atc.) and just leave the master files that created them (the INDDs, the PRPROJs, the AEPs, etc.) so I can reconstruct them down the line if I ever need to. I can tell the script what drive and folder to search (and I'd assign that to a variable since the backup location may change and I'd like to just change it once), but I need help with the rest.
I'm stuck because I'm not quite sure how to combine the two pieces of code that I have to get Powershell to do this.
If what you want is to
"Look for all folders named 'Draft Materials.' When you find a folder with that name, get its full path ($source), then run a command to delete files of a given file extension ($searchfile) from that folder."
then you could do something like:
$rootPath = 'X:\Path\To\Start\Searching\From' # the starting point for the search
$searchFolder = 'Draft Materials' # the folder name to search for
$deleteThese = '*.PDF', '*.BMP', '*.AVI', '*.MOV' # an array of file patterns to delete
# get a list of all folders called 'Draft Materials'
Get-ChildItem -Path $rootPath -Directory -Filter $searchFolder -Recurse | ForEach-Object {
# inside each of these folders, get the files you want to delete and remove them
Get-ChildItem -Path $_.FullName -File -Recurse -Include $deleteThese |
Remove-Item -WhatIf
}
Or use Get-ChildItem only once, having it search for files. Then test if their fullnames contain the folder called 'Draft Materials'
$rootPath = 'X:\Path\To\Start\Searching\From'
$searchFolder = 'Draft Materials'
$deleteThese = '*.PDF', '*.BMP', '*.AVI', '*.MOV'
# get a list of all files with extensions from the $deleteThese array
Get-ChildItem -Path $rootPath -File -Recurse -Include $deleteThese |
# if in their full path names the folder 'Draft Materials' is present, delete them
Where-Object { $_.FullName -match "\\$searchFolder\\" } |
Remove-Item -WhatIf
In both cases I have added safety switch -WhatIf so when you run this, nothing gets deleted and in the console is written what would happen.
If that info shows the correct files are being removed, take off (or comment out) -Whatif and run the code again.
The closest I got was using powershell Get-ChildItem given multiple -Filters
Get-ChildItem -Include "Intro", "*.mp4" -Recurse
I think, -Include with multiple params work as OR operator. It gives folders with either "Intro" folder OR "*.mp4" files.
But I need AND condition. Folder must contain a folder named "Intro" and "*.mp4" files.
I need folders structured following -
E:.
└───test1.mp4
└───test2.mp4
└───test3.mp4
└───test4.mp4
└───test5.mp4
└───test6.mp4
└───Intro
Update 1
I am searching for folders which meet two condition.
It must have a subfolder named Intro AND
It must have *.mp4 files.
The answer would look something like the following I guess.
Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse {HasSubFolderNamedIntro && HasMP4Files}
Just wanted to add another Method (one-liner) to get the folder which contains mp4 files and a folder Intro (probs to #HenrikStanleyMortensen for most of it):
(Get-ChildItem -include "*.mp4" -Recurse -File).DirectoryName | Select-Object -Unique | Where-Object {(Get-ChildItem $_ -Recurse -Include 'Intro' -Directory)}
Do you need the command to only return the file objects or do you also want the folder objects?
If just the files I would do it like this:
Get-ChildItem -include "*.mp4" -Recurse -File | Where-Object {$_.Directory.Name -match 'Intro'}
So we use the include to find the mp4 files and reduce the amount of objects we pipe.
Then we pipe it to Where-Object and look for the property with the name of the folder and says we want it to contain the word "intro". If the folder needs to be called Intro exactly and not just contain it you can change the -match to -eq
Edit
To get the directories then we could do it like this:
(Get-ChildItem -include "*.mp4" -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Directory.Name -match 'Intro'}).DirectoryName | Select-Object -Unique
Now we say that all the files that we found that matches our search, we want to see the full directory path of those files.
To only get one match per directory, so if we have 1 directory that matches with multiple mp4 files, and we don't want to see that same directory in our output one time per file, we can pipe the result into Select-Object -Uniqueto only see each directory once.
Edit 2
After clarification from OP.
To find a folder that contains both mp4 files and a subfolder called intro I don't think we can do that only from the Get-ChildItem command in any way I know of, so we can loop through each folder like this:
$Files = (Get-ChildItem -include "*.mp4" -Recurse -File).DirectoryName | Select-Object -Unique
foreach($File in $Files) {
Get-ChildItem -Path $File.DirectoryName -Recurse -Include 'Intro' -Directory
}
We Pipe to the Select-Object -Unique to make sure that folders with multiple mp4 files are not looped through more than once thus giving us an output with the same intro folder multiple times.
This seems like a simple operation but I can't figure out how to get Powershell to copy an entire folder structure from one location to another but exclude one folder (called 'connections') and its contents.
I've tried combining Copy-Item and Get-ChildItem like so
cpi (gci folder1 -Exclude connections) folder2 -recurse
but it seems the -recurse parameter overwrites the -exclude parameter and the connections folder and its contents are copied. Without -recurse the contents of the folders I do want copied are ignored.
I'm not sure why that isn't working, it seems to behave correctly on my machine.
You could always pipe to Copy-Item:
Get-ChildItem folder1 | where { !(($_ -is [System.IO.DirectoryInfo]) -and ($_.Name -eq "connections")) } | Copy-Item -Destination folder2 -Recurse
The advantage of this is that you can just get PowerShell to print out the output after:
Get-ChildItem folder1 | where { !(($_ -is [System.IO.DirectoryInfo]) -and ($_.Name -eq "connections")) }
That way you can check exactly what is getting copied (i.e. is the "connections" folder missing?)
I need to copy only certain parts of a folder using Powershell, specifically this list:
$files = #("MyProgram.exe",
"MyProgram.exe.config",
"MyProgram.pdb",
".\XmlConfig\*.xml")
In human readable form: 3 specific MyProgram.* files under root of target folder and all XML files under XmlConfig folder which itself is under root of source path (..\bin\Release\ in my case). XmlConfig folder must be created in destination, if it does not exist.
What I have tried:
(1) I tried the following, but it did not work, i.e. no folder or files were created at the destination path:
Copy-Item -Recurse -Path "..\bin\Release\" -Destination ".\Test\" -Include $files
(2) When -Include is removed, whole folder structure is successfully created, including subfolders and files:
Copy-Item -Recurse -Path "..\bin\Release\" -Destination ".\Test\"
It must be something wrong with my understanding of how -Include filter works:
(3) I tested an assumption that -Include needs an array of wildcards, but this did not work either:
$files = #("*MyProgram.exe*",
"*MyProgram.exe.config*",
"*MyProgram.pdb*",
"*.\XmlConfig\*.xml*")
Please advise on how to properly do Copy-Item in my case.
UPDATE (based on below answers):
I am looking for a generic implementation that takes an array of strings. It opens the possibility to put all necessary files/paths in one place, for easy editing, so that a non-Powershell knowledgeable person can understand and modify it as required. So in the end it would be single script to perform XCOPY deployments for any project, with input file being the only variable part. For above example, the input would look like this (saved as input.txt and passed as an argument to the main script):
MyProgram.exe
MyProgram.exe.config
MyProgram.pdb
.\XmlConfig\*.xml
I would prefer wildcards approach, since not many people know regex.
i don't know what is wrong with filter but you can still do
$files | % { copy-item ..\bin\release\$_ -Destination .\test}
if you want to preserve directoty structure you'll have to weak this a little, like :
$sourcedir="c:\temp\test"
$f=#("existing.txt","hf.csv";"..\dir2\*.txt")
$f |%{
$source=ls (join-Path $sourcedir $_) |select -expand directoryname
if ("$source" -like "$sourcedir*"){
$destination=$source.Substring($sourcedir.Length)+".\"
}
else{
$destination=$_
}
copy-item $sourcedir\$_ -Destination $destination -WhatIf
}
AFAICT -Include works only with file names or directory names and not combinations i.e. paths. You can try something like this:
$files = 'MyProgram\.exe|MyProgram\.exe\.config|MyProgram\.pdb|XmlConfig\\.*?\.xml'
Get-ChildItem ..\bin\release -r | Where {!$_.PSIsContainer -and ($_.FullName -match $files)} |
Copy-Item -Dest .\test
With wildcards you could do it this way:
$files = #('*MyProgram.exe','*MyProgram.exe.config','*MyProgram.pdb','*\XmkConfig\*.xml')
Get-ChildItem ..\bin\release -r |
Foreach {$fn=$_.Fullname;$_} |
Where {!$_.PSIsContainer -and ($files | Where {$fn -like $_})} |
Copy-Item -Dest .\test
I need to copy all my fileserver psts to another location with their folder paths.
I did the following
Get-ChildItem D: -recurse -include *.pst | copy-item -destination z:\
But this resulted in copies of like filenames being created.
I need the copy to write out the path name (its home folders so the pathname will help with easy ownership)
Any suggestions?
You could use the -recurse and -force flag on copy-item. It might create the folder structure. If it doesn't, you can use New-item to create that structure with a bit of work. If you're looking for an answer like that (i.e. you want folder structure copied as well) update your question with more detail and you'll get an answer focused on that.
What I would do, if I was just looking for a unique name for each PST, is to convert the full name to a file name on Z:, like so:
$psts = Get-ChildItem D:\ -recurse -include "*.pst"
$psts | % {
Copy-Item $_.FullName -Destination ($_.FullName.Replace("D:\","Z:\").Replace("\","-"))
}
It might be messy, but it should be unique.