Question

I want to write a PowerShell script that will recursively search a directory, but exclude specified files (for example, *.log, and myFile.txt), and also exclude specified directories, and their contents (for example, myDir and all files and folders below myDir).

I have been working with the Get-ChildItem CmdLet, and the Where-Object CmdLet, but I cannot seem to get this exact behavior.

Answer 1

The Get-ChildItem cmdlet has an -Exclude parameter that is tempting to use but it doesn’t work for filtering out entire directories from what I can tell. Try something like this:

function GetFiles($path = $pwd, [string[]]$exclude) 
{ 
    foreach ($item in Get-ChildItem $path)
    {
        if ($exclude | Where {$item -like $_}) { continue }

        if (Test-Path $item.FullName -PathType Container) 
        {
            $item 
            GetFiles $item.FullName $exclude
        } 
        else 
        { 
            $item 
        }
    } 
}