| Okay, this post I’m going to write down for my personal notes but also for you.. Ever needed to delete a specific file, in my case in need to delete (remove-item) all *.pdb files in one of my Visual Studio Solution.. recursive of course. To get a list of Files use the Get-ChildItem CmdLet. Extend that command using the –rec or –recurse parameter – so you’ll get all the files recursively, starting from the current path / directory. |
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Now, we don’t need all the file, but all the files with a specific extension. We’ll use the Where-Object to achieve this. Well if you do Get-ChildItem you’ll get something like:
PS D:\DEMO> Get-ChildItem
Directory: D:\DEMO
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
—- ————- —— —-
d—- 19.02.2010 13:16 DEMO Folder
-a— 19.02.2010 13:17 18 someFile.ext
PS D:\DEMO>
So, how to get only files with a specific extension? Easy, using Get-Member we can list all properties of Get-ChildItem.
PS D:\DEMO> Get-ChildItem | Get-Member
TypeName: System.IO.DirectoryInfo
Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
Mode CodeProperty System.String Mode{get=Mode;}
Create Method System.Void Create(System.Security.AccessControl.DirectorySecurity director…
…
…
Extension Property System.String Extension {get;}
FullName Property System.String FullName {get;}
…
…
PS D:\DEMO>
When we want to search for a specific File Type, the Extension Property comes in very handy.
So, to get a list of all, let’s say *.tmp files recursively, we’ll write:
PS D:\DEMO> Get-ChildItem -Rec | Where {$_.Extension -match "tmp"}
Directory: D:\DEMO
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
—- ————- —— —-
-a— 19.02.2010 13:22 12 demo.tmp
Directory: D:\DEMO\DEMO Folder
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
—- ————- —— —-
-a— 19.02.2010 13:22 12 dem32.tmp
-a— 19.02.2010 13:22 12 demo2.tmp
PS D:\DEMO>
Now, let’s delete all of these *.tmp files using Remove-Item
PS D:\DEMO> Get-ChildItem -Rec | Where {$_.Extension -match "tmp"} | Remove-Item
and they are all gone!
