Using the Get-ChildItem Cmdlet
Replicating (and Extending) the DIR Command
In its basic form the Get-ChildItem cmdlet provides functionality similar to the dir command. For example, if you simply type Get-ChildItem at the Windows PowerShell prompt you’ll get back information about the objects in the current location:
Directory: Microsoft.Windows PowerShell.Core\FileSystem::C:\Documents and Settings\kenmyer
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d---- 3/1/2006 9:03 AM Bluetooth Software
d---s 5/10/2006 8:55 AM Cookies
d---- 5/9/2006 2:09 PM Desktop
d-r-- 5/9/2006 8:22 AM Favorites
d-r-- 5/9/2006 2:24 PM My Documents
d-r-- 3/1/2006 8:15 AM Start Menu
d---s 3/1/2006 3:41 PM UserData
d---- 3/16/2006 3:29 PM WINDOWS
That’s all well and good, but you can do a lot more with Get-ChildItem than simply list the items found in the current location. For example, in the output above you might have noticed that there wasn’t much to look at; that’s because the current location happened to be a folder that contained only a handful of subfolders. Because of that you might have found it a bit more useful if Get-ChildItem had returned not only the names of those subfolders but also the contents of those subfolders; that is, you might want a list of all the files and folders in the subfolders. No problem; just add the -recurse parameter:
Get-ChildItem -recurse
Of course, you aren’t limited to working with only the current location; in fact, you aren’t limited to working with just files and folders. Would you like to see a list of all your environment variables? Then simply pass along the path to the environment variable “drive,” like so:
Get-ChildItem env:
What about all the registry subkeys found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall? Why not:
Get-ChildItem HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Note. Get-ChildItem cannot be used to retrieve information about the registry values contained within a subkey. For that you need to use the Get-ItemProperty cmdlet. |
We could do this all day. For example, the -include and -exclude parameters make it easy to retrieve a specific set of items from a location. Suppose you want information about only the .txt and .log files found in the folder C:\Scripts? That’s easy:
Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\*.* -include *.txt,*.log
As you can see, we ask for all the files (*.*) found in the folder C:\Scripts. We then tack on the -include parameter, specifying two file types: *.txt and *.log. (And separating the file types using a comma). What do we get back? We get back only .txt and .log files:
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a--- 4/6/2006 8:28 PM 3508 950.Log
-a--- 5/6/2006 10:06 AM 0 Employees.txt
-a--- 5/6/2006 10:06 AM 0 Employees_NODUPL.txt
-a--- 5/6/2006 10:06 AM 0 ExcelData.txt
-a--- 3/3/2006 9:24 PM 14894 methods.txt
-a--- 4/28/2006 1:36 PM 41 new_name.txt
-a--- 3/7/2006 1:44 PM 4112 read-write.txt
-a--- 4/11/2006 11:04 AM 18 servers.txt
-a--- 5/5/2006 9:09 PM 53358 tee.txt
-a--- 4/26/2006 12:28 PM 1125 temporary_print_file.txt
-a--- 5/6/2006 10:30 PM 34184 test.log
-a--- 5/9/2006 3:17 PM 58 test.txt
-a--- 4/6/2006 10:26 PM 205 test_NODUPL.txt
-a--- 4/28/2006 1:16 PM 27 x.txt
-a--- 5/8/2006 2:39 PM 25 y.txt
If we wanted to get back everything except .txt and .log files then we’d simply use the -exclude parameter instead; this parameter tells Windows PowerShell which items should not be included in the returned dataset. Here’s what the command looks like:
Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\*.* -exclude *.txt,*.log
Give it a try and see what happens.
The information returned by Get-ChildItem can also be piped into the Sort-Object cmdlet, providing a way to sort the data by in some other format. Would you rather see files sorted by size (length) than by name? Then use this command:
Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\*.* | Sort-Object length
Or, if you’d rather see the largest files listed first and the smallest files listed last, then add the -descending parameter:
Get-ChildItem c:\scripts\*.* | Sort-Object length -descending
| Get-ChildItem Aliases |
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