CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellsearchgrep
c2754345
c2754345

Reputation: 23

Windows file search within a search, how? App, script, GREP, powershell, notepad hack?

I am trying to search for folders created within a certain date range, then search for files with certain attributes in only those folders. I thought with Windows 8's "advanced query system" this would be a 2 minute job...it isn't!

Can anyone recommend an easy way to do this? I'm thinking along the lines of regular expressions i can input into AstroGrep, or a Notepad++ hack, as it's easy to copy folder paths from windows search into a text document.

Thanks!

EDIT: To clarify, I am trying to find files which were added to the system during a certain date range. Searching by file created/modified attributes does not help as these attributes are carried over when the file is moved. However a folder's date attributes do change when files are moved in and out. Therefore I need to search for folders by date, then (because of the huge number of files and subfolders) search within the resulting folders for my files.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 152

Answers (1)

Martin Brandl
Martin Brandl

Reputation: 59031

You could use the Get-ChildItem cmldet to retrieve all directories during a certain date range (for example: Now and a Month ago):

$dateNow = Get-Date
$dateaMonthAgo = $dateNow.AddMonths(-1)

$directories = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\' -Directory -Recurse | 
    Where { $_.LastAccessTime -le $dateNow -and $_.LastAccessTime -ge $dateaMonthAgo }

Now you have all directories that matches the date range. You can iterate over them and search for your files:

$directories | Get-ChildItem -Filter 'yourFile.txt'

Upvotes: 1

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