A complete directory listing

Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:14:52 GMT

Sometimes there are things I just want to try the hard way. Of course you can get a complete directory listing by using

get-childitem -recurse, but you can also do it differently. Same output, but much more fun to try and héy, you want to learn powershell or you don't. I do.

So the stuff below might seem useless effort, but you can use it for much more than just a directorylisting.

It's easy to get a directory listing one level down, or two, or three, or whatever. Just as long as you know how many subs there are. So what if you don't know how many levels down a directorystructure goes or if you just don't care. Then you can do the following:

PS>>Function dirlist {ls $_.FullName|Foreach {$_;if ($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}}};Get-Item * |Foreach {$_;if
($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}}

If you do the above you'll get the info, but in an pretty unreadable format, so just format the output:

PS>>Function dirlist {ls $_.FullName|Foreach {$_;if ($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}}};Get-Item * |Foreach {$_;if
($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}} |ft name,fullname

And you can sort on what and how you want

PS>>Function dirlist {ls $_.FullName|Foreach {$_;if ($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}}};Get-Item * |Foreach {$_;if
($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}} |Sort-Object -descending creationtime|ft name,creationtime

Or just export to a csv so that later, you can do whatever you want. Sort it, filter, choose output format, etc, etc.

PS>>Function dirlist {ls $_.FullName|Foreach {$_;if ($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist}}};Get-Item * |Foreach {$_;if
($_.Mode -like "d*"){dirlist} | Export-csv dirlist.csv

**update**

As Vinicius Canto mentioned in the reactions, there is a better way to determine if a childitem is a container (directory) or not. This is done by checking the NoteProperty "$_.PSIsContainer", instead of what I used: "if ($_.Mode -like "d*")" or using the -band operator as Vinicius used on his blog at http://viniciuscanto.blogspot.com/2007/01/dir-ad-no-powershell-onde-ele-foi-parar.html"

The NoteProperty "PSIsContainer" works faster than doing a compaire. It simply results in a $True of $False

This results in:

PS>>Function dirlist {ls $_.FullName|Foreach {$_;if ($_.PSIsContainer){dirlist}}};Get-Item * |Foreach {$_;if
($_.PSIsContainer){dirlist} | Export-csv dirlist.csv

Thanks Vinicius. And Jeffrey Snover who gave the initial hint.

Grt

Dennis

Just Powershell it: one-liners

A complete directory listing