I need to get all the files including the files present in the subfolders that belong to a particular type.
I am doing something like this, using Get-ChildItem:
Get-ChildItem "C:\windows\System32" -Recurse | where {$_.extension -eq ".txt"}
However, it's only returning me the files names and not the entire path.
Add | select FullName
to the end of your line above. If you need to actually do something with that afterwards, you might have to pipe it into a foreach loop, like so:
get-childitem "C:\windows\System32" -recurse | where {$_.extension -eq ".txt"} | % {
Write-Host $_.FullName
}
This should perform much faster than using late filtering:
Get-ChildItem C:\WINDOWS\System32 -Filter *.txt -Recurse | % { $_.FullName }
You can also use Select-Object like so:
Get-ChildItem "C:\WINDOWS\System32" *.txt -Recurse | Select-Object FullName
Select-Object
returns PSCustomObject
, not a string. It might not work if you use result as parameter for another program
PSCustomObject
, use -ExpandProperty FullName
instead of simply FullName
. As far as I understand, -ExpandProperty
parameter causes the cmdlet to return the results as the specified property's (native?) type instead of as some custom object.
Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Program Files\TheProgram' -Recurse | Where-Object -FilterScript {($_.LastWriteTime -gt '2020-03-01')} | Select-Object FullName
Here's a shorter one:
(Get-ChildItem C:\MYDIRECTORY -Recurse).fullname > filename.txt
(gci -r c:\).fullname
(ls -r c:\).fullname
(ls -r c:).fullname
If relative paths are what you want you can just use the -Name
flag.
Get-ChildItem "C:\windows\System32" -Recurse -Filter *.txt -Name
subfolder/file.txt
Try this:
Get-ChildItem C:\windows\System32 -Include *.txt -Recurse | select -ExpandProperty FullName
Get-ChildItem -Recurse *.txt | Format-Table FullName
That is what I used. I feel it is more understandable as it doesn't contain any loop syntax.
Really annoying thing in PS 5, where $_ won't be the full path within foreach. These are the string versions of FileInfo and DirectoryInfo objects. For some reason a wildcard in the path fixes it, or use Powershell 6 or 7. You can also pipe to get-item in the middle.
Get-ChildItem -path C:\WINDOWS\System32\*.txt -Recurse | foreach { "$_" }
Get-ChildItem -path C:\WINDOWS\System32 -Recurse | get-item | foreach { "$_" }
This seems to have been an issue with .Net that got resolved in .Net Core (Powershell 7): Stringification behavior of FileInfo / Directory instances has changed since v6.0.2 #7132
This worked for me, and produces a list of names:
$Thisfile=(get-childitem -path 10* -include '*.JPG' -recurse).fullname
I found it by using get-member -membertype properties
, an incredibly useful command. most of the options it gives you are appended with a .<thing>
, like fullname
is here. You can stick the same command;
| get-member -membertype properties
at the end of any command to get more information on the things you can do with them and how to access those:
get-childitem -path 10* -include '*.JPG' -recurse | get-member -membertype properties
Why has nobody used the foreach loop yet? A pro here is that you can easily name your variable:
# Note that I'm pretty explicit here. This would work as well as the line after:
# Get-ChildItem -Recurse C:\windows\System32\*.txt
$fileList = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path C:\windows\System32 -Include *.txt
foreach ($textfile in $fileList) {
# This includes the filename ;)
$filePath = $textfile.fullname
# You can replace the next line with whatever you want to.
Write-Output $filePath
}
$
in front of textfile
: $textfile = $fileList[$i].FullName
. Assuming $i
has a numeric value, that is.
I used this line command to search ".xlm" files in "C:\Temp" and the result print fullname path in file "result.txt":
(Get-ChildItem "C:\Temp" -Recurse | where {$_.extension -eq ".xml"} ).fullname > result.txt
In my tests, this syntax works beautiful for me.
gci "C:\WINDOWS\System32" -r -include .txt | select fullname
[alternative syntax]
For some people, directional pipe operators are not their taste, but they rather prefer chaining. See some interesting opinions on this topic shared in roslyn issue tracker: dotnet/roslyn#5445.
Based on the case and the context, one of this approach can be considered implicit (or indirect). For example, in this case using pipe against enumerable requires special token $_
(aka PowerShell's "THIS" token
) might appear distasteful to some.
For such fellas, here is a more concise, straight-forward way of doing it with dot chaining:
(gci . -re -fi *.txt).FullName
(<rant> Note that PowerShell's command arguments parser accepts the partial parameter names. So in addition to -recursive
; -recursiv
, -recursi
, -recurs
, -recur
, -recu
, -rec
and -re
are accepted, but unfortunately not -r
.. which is the only correct choice that makes sense with single -
character (if we go by POSIXy UNIXy conventions)! </rant>)
-r
short form of -Recurse
works fine for me.
-File
switch -fi
in the sample: -fil
and -file
works, but not -f
. Going by POSIX style, it should be --file
(multi-letters) and -f
(single-letter, unless -f is reserved for something else, say force
switch, then it can be something else like -l
or no single-letter option at all).
I am using below script to extact all folder path:
Get-ChildItem -path "C:\" -Recurse -Directory -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object FullName | Out-File "Folder_List.csv"
Full folder path is not coming. After 113 characters, is coming:
Example - C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceMetadataCache\dmrccache\en-US\ec4d5fdd-aa12-400f-83e2-7b0ea6023eb7\Windows...
I had an issue where I had an executable file which had directory path strings as parameters and the format. Like this:
"C:\temp\executable.exe" "C:\storage\filename" "C:\storage\dump" -jpg
I needed to execute this command across terabytes of .jpg files in different folders.
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path C:\storage\*.jpg -Recurse -Force | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName
for ($i=0; $i -lt $files.Count; $i++) {
[string]$outfile = $files[$i]
Start-Process -NoNewWindow -FilePath "C:\temp\executable.exe" -ArgumentList $outfile, "C:\storage\dump", "-dcm"
}
Success story sharing
*.txt*
(-Filter
uses CMD wildcards). If this is not what you want then use-Include *.txt
.ls | % { $_.FullName }
to get full path in file listing ; assuming alias ls=Get-ChildItem