7zip in Powershell keeps saying "Too long switch" or "Too short switch"

Question

Tried many combinations using this script to compress a lot of files into individual files using 7zip, but I keep getting errors.

Get-ChildItem *.smc | ForEach-Object { 7z a -yx9 -x9 "$_.Name+.7z" $_.Name }

Keeps coming up with "Too Long Switch" or "Too Short Switch". What's going on here?

Answer 1

There are two separate problems with your command:

• You're incorrectly embedding property access $_.Name inside "...": you must use "$($_.Name)+.7z" - note the use of $(...), the subexpression operator.

  • In short: In order to embed expressions in an expandable string ("..."), you must enclose them in $(...). Notably, this includes property and indexed access (e.g., $($var.property), $($var[0])). Only variables as a whole do not require this (e.g., $var, $env:USERNAME). See this answer for more information.

• Your options are meant to specify file-analysis levels and compression levels, which means that they must be passed as option arguments to the -m option.

  • Therefore, use -myx9 -mx9

Answer 2

I used cmd /c to solve my problem with -x, eg:

& { cmd /c "7z a -x!.vs ..\snakepas_vs2022.zip ." }

Or:

& { 7z a "-x!.vs" ..\snakepas_vs2022.zip . }