Using Remove-Item cmdlet but excluding sub-directory

Question

I want to remove the following files from the source, however in the source there is a sub-directory that contains files with similar names. When I run the following command it is deleting files in the sub-directory with similar file name. Is there a way to just delete the files from the source and not the sub-directory?

Example: test_1_file, test_2_file, test_3_file exists in each directory, TestFolder and TestFolder/sub

$source = testfolder 
remove-item -Path $source -filter test_*_file -recurse -force

BenH · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-27T17:20:44.407

7

It's usually easiest to pipe the output of Get-ChildItem cmdlet into Remove-Item. You then can use the better filtering of Get-ChildItem as I think -Recurse in Remove-Item has some issues. You can even use Where-Object to further filter before passing to Remove-Item

$source = testfolder
Get-ChildItem -Path $source -Filter test_*_file -Recurse |
    Where-Object {$_.Fullname -notlike "$source\sub\*"} |
    Remove-Item -Force

edited Mar 27 '17 at 17:20

answered Mar 24 '17 at 20:36

BenH

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Looks like this was still removing test_*_file from "$source/sub/*" – Mike Mar 27 '17 at 13:13
@mike Verify that you slashes are facing the correct direction. If it's Windows they should be backslashes. Because the issue will be the matching in the `Where-Object` filter. I used the `/` to match your path, but I have edited the answer since you had issues. – BenH Mar 27 '17 at 17:22

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

If the files to delete:

are all located directly in $source
and no other files / directories must be deleted:

Remove-Item -Path $source/test_*_file -Force

No need for -Recurse (as @Bill_Stewart notes).

Note: For conceptual clarity I've appended the wildcard pattern (test_*_file) directly to the $source path.
Using a wildcard expression separately with -Filter is generally faster (probably won't matter here), but it has its quirks and pitfalls.

Using Remove-Item cmdlet but excluding sub-directory

2 Answers2