How can I exclude multiple folders using Get-ChildItem -exclude?

Question

I need to generate a configuration file for our Pro/Engineer CAD system. I need a recursive list of the folders from a particular drive on our server. However I need to EXCL

Answer 1

I wanted a solution that didn't involve looping over every single item and doing ifs. Here's a solution that is just a simple recursive function over Get-ChildItem. We just loop and recurse over directories.

function Get-RecurseItem {
    [Cmdletbinding()]
    param (
        [Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)][string]$Path,
        [string[]]$Exclude = @(),
        [string]$Include = '*'
    )
    Get-ChildItem -Path (Join-Path $Path '*') -Exclude $Exclude -Directory | ForEach-Object {
        @(Get-ChildItem -Path (Join-Path $_ '*') -Include $Include -Exclude $Exclude -File) + ``
        @(Get-RecurseItem -Path $_ -Include $Include -Exclude $Exclude)
    }
}

Answer 2

I'd do it like this:

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -r  | 
          ? { $_.PsIsContainer -and $_.FullName -notmatch 'archive' }

Answer 3

Based on @NN_ comment on @Guillem answer, I came up with the below code. This allows you to exclude folders and files:

Get-ChildItem -Exclude 'folder-to-exclude','second-folder-exclude' |
foreach {
    Get-ChildItem -Path $_ -Exclude 'files-to-exclude','*.zip','*.mdmp','*.out*','*.log' -Recurse |
    Select-String -Pattern 'string-to-look-for' -List
}

Answer 4

I apologize if this answer seems like duplication of previous answers. I just wanted to show an updated (tested through POSH 5.0) way of solving this. The previous answers were pre-3.0 and not as efficient as modern solutions.

The documentation isn't clear on this, but Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Exclude only matches exclusion on the leaf (Split-Path $_.FullName -Leaf), not the parent path (Split-Path $_.FullName -Parent). Matching the exclusion will just remove the item with the matching leaf; Get-ChildItem will still recurse into that leaf.

In POSH 1.0 or 2.0

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Recurse  | 
          ? { $_.PsIsContainer -and $_.FullName -inotmatch 'archive' }

Note: Same answer as @CB.

In POSH 3.0+

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Directory -Recurse  | 
          ? { $_.FullName -inotmatch 'archive' }

Note: Updated answer from @CB.

Multiple Excludes

This specifically targets directories while excluding leafs with the Exclude parameter, and parents with the ilike (case-insensitive like) comparison:

#Requires -Version 3.0
[string[]]$Paths = @('C:\Temp', 'D:\Temp')
[string[]]$Excludes = @('*archive*', '*Archive*', '*ARCHIVE*', '*archival*')

$files = Get-ChildItem $Paths -Directory -Recurse -Exclude $Excludes | %{ 
    $allowed = $true
    foreach ($exclude in $Excludes) { 
        if ((Split-Path $_.FullName -Parent) -ilike $exclude) { 
            $allowed = $false
            break
        }
    }
    if ($allowed) {
        $_
    }
}

Note: If you want your $Excludes to be case-sensitive, there are two steps:

1. Remove the Exclude parameter from Get-ChildItem.
2. Change the first if condition to:
   • if ($_.FullName -clike $exclude) {

Note: This code has redundancy that I would never implement in production. You should simplify this quite a bit to fit your exact needs. It serves well as a verbose example.

Answer 5

You can exclude like this, the regex 'or' symbol, assuming a file you want doesn't have the same name as a folder you're excluding.

$exclude = 'dir1|dir2|dir3'
ls -r | where { $_.fullname -notmatch $exclude }

ls -r -dir | where fullname -notmatch 'dir1|dir2|dir3'

Answer 6

VertigoRay, in his answer, explained that -Exclude works only at the leaf level of a path (for a file the filename with path stripped out; for a sub-directory the directory name with path stripped out). So it looks like -Exclude cannot be used to specify a directory (eg "bin") and exclude all the files and sub-directories within that directory.

Here's a function to exclude files and sub-directories of one or more directories (I know this is not directly answering the question but I thought it might be useful in getting around the limitations of -Exclude):

$rootFolderPath = 'C:\Temp\Test'
$excludeDirectories = ("bin", "obj");

function Exclude-Directories
{
    process
    {
        $allowThrough = $true
        foreach ($directoryToExclude in $excludeDirectories)
        {
            $directoryText = "*\" + $directoryToExclude
            $childText = "*\" + $directoryToExclude + "\*"
            if (($_.FullName -Like $directoryText -And $_.PsIsContainer) `
                -Or $_.FullName -Like $childText)
            {
                $allowThrough = $false
                break
            }
        }
        if ($allowThrough)
        {
            return $_
        }
    }
}

Clear-Host

Get-ChildItem $rootFolderPath -Recurse `
    | Exclude-Directories

For a directory tree:

C:\Temp\Test\
|
├╴SomeFolder\
|  |
|  └╴bin (file without extension)
|
└╴MyApplication\
  |
  ├╴BinFile.txt
  ├╴FileA.txt
  ├╴FileB.txt
  |
  └╴bin\
    |
    └╴Debug\
      |
      └╴SomeFile.txt

The result is:

C:\Temp\Test\
|
├╴SomeFolder\
|  |
|  └╴bin (file without extension)
|
└╴MyApplication\
  |
  ├╴BinFile.txt
  ├╴FileA.txt
  └╴FileB.txt

It excludes the bin\ sub-folder and all its contents but does not exclude files Bin.txt or bin (file named "bin" without an extension).