Working with Files and Folders using PowerShell

In this article I’ll explain various PowerShell commands to perform File/Directory operations.

Get-ChildItem

You can use ‘Get-ChildItem’ command to get list of all the files and folder of given path.

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell 

You can use below commands to list either files or folders only of given path

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell -File

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell -Directory

You can use below command to filter files and folders as per your requirement.

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell -Filter *.pdf

You can you below command to list all the files and folders of give path recursively.

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell -Recurse

You can also use Include or Exclude parameters with Get-ChildItem command to filter files.

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell -Include "*.pdf" -Exclude "s*.PDF" –Recurse

New-Item

You can use ‘New-Item’ command to create new file or directory.

New-Item -Type File "C:\PowerShell\First1.txt"

New-Item -Type Directory "C:\PowerShell\MyFolder"

Copy-Item

You can use Copy-Item command to copy files and directories.

Copy-Item First1.txt Mitesh\First2.txt

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell\Mitesh

Remove-Item

You can use Remove-Item command to delete files and directories.

Remove-Item c:\PowerShell\Mitesh\First2.txt

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell\Mitesh

Rename-Item

You can use ‘Rename-Item’ command to rename file and directories.

Rename-Item First1.txt First3.txt

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\PowerShell\Mitesh

Move-Item

You can use ‘Move-Item’ command to move files and directories.

Move-Item c:\PowerShell\First3.txt C:\PowerShell\Mitesh\First1.txt

Get-ChildItem C:\PowerShell\Mitesh

Summary

Alias	Cmdlet	Description
dir	Get-ChildItem	List files and folders
ni	New-Item	Create new files and folders
copy	Copy-Item	Copy files and folders
del/rmdir	Remove-Item	Delete files and folders
ren	Rename-Item	Rename files and folders
move	Move-Item	Move files and folders

I hope you now have some basic understanding about PowerShell file and folder cmdlets to play around it. 

Thank you for reading this article. Please leave your feedback in comments below.

Reference –

MSDN

See Also –

Introduction to Windows PowerShell