CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellwildcard
Randy
Randy

Reputation: 1146

Recursive Wildcards in PowerShell

I'm trying to delete files in a specific set of folders with PowerShell. My code currently looks like this:

$tempfolders = @(
    "C:\Windows\Temp\*"
    "C:\Documents and Settings\*\Local Settings\temp\*"
    "C:\Users\*\Appdata\Local\Temp\*"
    )

Remove-Item $tempfolders -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

I want to add a new folder to that list, with the following formula:

"C:\users\*\AppData\Local\Program\**\Subfolder"

where ** could be multiple subfolders of unknown length. For example, it could be settings\subsettings or it could be folder\settings\subsettings. Is there a way to do this?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2727

Answers (2)

Leon Bouquiet
Leon Bouquiet

Reputation: 4382

You can feed the full path of each file to a regex; this will return only the files that match your format, which you can then pipe to Remove-Item:

ls "C:\Users" -Recurse -Hidden | Where-Object { $_.FullName -imatch '^C:\\users\\([^\\]+)\\AppData\\Local\\Program\\(.*)\\Subfolder' }

Because regexes are considered write-only, a bit of explanation:

  • backslashes count as escape characters inside a regex and need to be doubled.
  • ([^\\]+) means one or more of any character except a backslash
  • .* means zero or more of any character

Upvotes: 2

ArcSet
ArcSet

Reputation: 6860

You can use Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse, This will do exactly what you are asking for. Pipe it from the array to a Remove-Item

@("C:\Windows\Temp\*", "C:\Documents and Settings\*\Local Settings\temp\*", "C:\Users\*\Appdata\Local\Temp\*") | 
    Get-ChildItem -Directory -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | 
    Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Just for a heads up in Powershell Piping | is key. PowerShell we love to chain commands.

Upvotes: 0

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