I'm trying to copy all of the cover.jpg files in my music library to one folder. My attempts so far have either landed me with one file in the destination, or every desired file but also in their own folder matching the source (i.e. folders named for each album containing just the cover.jpg file).
Get-ChildItem "C:\Music" -recurse -filter *.jpg | Copy-Item -Destination "C:\Destination"
I realised that the copy-item command was simply overwriting the previous copies thus leaving me with only one file. I then tried going down the renaming route by moving the file then renaming it but of course that failed as the folder I was basing the rename off has now changed. I don't want to change the name of the file before I copy it as other programs still need the cover.jpg to function.
My question is...
Does anybody know how to recursively look through each folder in my music library to find the cover.jpg file, rename it to match the parent folder (or even if possible, grandparent and parent) then copy that file to a new folder making sure to not copy or create any new folders in this destination?
As a bonus, could this check if a file already exists so that if I ran it in the future only new files will be copied?
The file structure for the library is pretty simple. \Music\Artist\Album title\cover.jpg
If you have a music library structure like that, the easiest way would be to use the properties Directory and Parent each FileInfo object returned by Get-ChildItem contains:
$sourcePath = 'C:\Music'
$destination = 'C:\Destination'
# if the destination folder does not already exist, create it
if (!(Test-Path -Path $destination -PathType Container)) {
$null = New-Item -Path $destination -ItemType Directory
}
Get-ChildItem -Path $sourcePath -Filter '*.jpg' -File -Recurse | ForEach-Object {
$newName = '{0}_{1}_{2}' -f $_.Directory.Parent.Name, $_.Directory.Name, $_.Name
$_ | Copy-Item -Destination (Join-Path -Path $destination -ChildPath $newName)
}
I have multiple zip files.
They are called folder(1).zip, folder(2).zip, folder(3).zip. Using PowerShell, when I attempt to unzip them all into unique folders using this...
Get-ChildItem 'c:\users\name\downloads' -Filter *.zip | Expand-Archive -DestinationPath 'c:\users\name\downloads' -Force
I get all of the files into one folder called "folder". How can I get the zip folders to unzip into separate folders?
Bonus question, is there a way, as part of this process, to rename each folder as it's coming out so folder(1).zip becomes Name-Here, folder(2).zip becomes Other-Name-Here, etc?
Thanks!
Because you specify only one destination path they will all be extracted into c:\users\name\downloads. I suppose the zip archives each contain a folder named "folder", so all contents from all archives end up together in c:\users\name\downloads\folder
You would have to specify a different destination path for each archive. Not sure what your naming convention should be, I have used a simple counter:
$counter = 0
Get-ChildItem 'c:\users\name\downloads' -Filter *.zip | foreach {
$destination = Join-Path $_.DirectoryName ("YourName" + $counter++)
Expand-Archive $_.FullName -DestinationPath $destination
}
Of course I suppose, now every of those folders will have the subfolder "folder", but if that's how the archives are built there's not really a way to change that. If you are absolutely sure that all archives have that subfolder, you could do something like this:
$counter = 0
Get-ChildItem 'c:\users\name\downloads' -Filter *.zip | foreach {
# expand to the root folder first
Expand-Archive $_.FullName -DestinationPath $_.DirectoryName
# now rename the extracted "folder" to whatever you like
Rename-Item (Join-Path $_.DirectoryName "folder") -NewName ("YourName" + $counter++)
}
Is there a way to use Compress-Archive script, that when run from a path:
archives all files matching a wildcard filter (*.doc, for example)
archives such files in the current folder and all children folders
save the relative folder structure (the option to use relative or absolute would be good, though)
I am having trouble have it accomplish all three of these at once.
Edit:
The following filters and recurses, but does not maintain folder structure
Get-ChildItem -Path ".\" -Filter "*.docx" -Recurse |
Compress-Archive -CompressionLevel Optimal -DestinationPath "$pwd\doc.archive-$(Get-Date -f yyyyMMdd.hhmmss).zip"
This item does not recurse:
Compress-Archive -Path "$pwd\*.docx" -CompressionLevel Optimal -DestinationPath "$pwd\doc.archive-$(Get-Date -f yyyyMMdd.hhmmss).zip"
At some point I had a command that would recurse but not filter, but can't get back to it now.
Unfortunately, Compress-Archive is quite limited as of Windows PowerShell v5.1 / PowerShell Core 6.1.0:
The only way to preserve a subdirectory tree is pass a directory path to Compress-Archive.
Unfortunately, doing so provides no inclusion/exclusion mechanism to only select a subset of files.
Additionally, the resulting archive will internally contain a single root directory named for the input directory (e.g., if you pass C:\temp\foo to Compress-Archive, the resulting archive will contain a single foo directory containing the input directory's subtree - as opposed to containing C:\temp\foo's content at the top level).
There is no option to preserve absolute paths.
A cumbersome work around is to create a temporary copy of your directory tree with only the files of interest (Copy-Item -Recurse -Filter *.docx . $env:TEMP\tmpDir; Compress-Archive $env:TEMP\tmpDir out.zip - note that empty dirs. will be included)
Given that you'll still invariably end up with a single root directory named for the input directory inside the archive, even that may not work for you - see the alternatives at the bottom.
You may be better off with alternatives:
Use the .NET v4.5+ [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile] and [System.IO.Compression.ZipFileExtensions] types directly.
In Windows PowerShell, unlike in PowerShell Core (v6+), you most load the relevant assembly manually with Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem - see below.
Use an external programs such as 7-Zip
Solving the problem with direct use of the .NET v4.5+ [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile] class:
Note:
In Windows PowerShell, unlike in PowerShell Core, you most load the relevant assembly manually with Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem.
Because PowerShell doesn't support implicit use of extension methods as of Windows PowerShell v5.1 / PowerShell Core 6.1.0, you must make explicit use of the [System.IO.Compression.ZipFileExtensions] class as well.
# Windows PowerShell: must load assembly System.IO.Compression.FileSystem manually.
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
# Create the target archive via .NET to provide more control over how files
# are added.
# Make sure that the target file doesn't already exist.
$archive = [System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::Open(
"$pwd\doc.archive-$(Get-Date -f yyyyMMdd.hhmmss).zip",
'Create'
)
# Get the list of files to archive with their relative paths and
# add them to the target archive one by one.
$useAbsolutePaths = $False # Set this to true to use absolute paths instead.
Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Filter *.docx | ForEach-Object {
# Determine the entry path, i.e., the archive-internal path.
$entryPath = (
($_.FullName -replace ([regex]::Escape($PWD.ProviderPath) + '[/\\]'), ''),
$_.FullName
)[$useAbsolutePaths]
$null = [System.IO.Compression.ZipFileExtensions]::CreateEntryFromFile(
$archive,
$_.FullName,
$entryPath
)
}
# Close the archive.
$archive.Dispose()
I'm trying to copy files using copy-item. Specifically, I want to copy files with a particular extension that are within a folder or its subfolders to another location, and to retain the subfolder hierarchy. I've tried using -filter and -include to specify the file extension, but no files are copied.
My source and destination paths are stored in variables $packageSourcePath and $objPath. When called, $packageSourcePath will be like the following ".\src\projects\Project1\PackageFiles" and $objPath will be like the following ".\bld\Project1\obj".
The command I've tried using is this:
Copy-Item -Path $packageSourcePath\* -Filter *.resw -Destination $objPath -Recurse
I've also tried variations, such as leaving off * from the path, or using -Include instead of -Filter. Nothing works. If I leave out the -Filter argument, then files copy, but all of the files are copied. I only want files with the particular extension.
I've given up on Copy-Item. JohnLBevan's answer didn't actually do what I want since all files in the source root get copied, even though they don't match the filter. I tried piping Convert-Path | Select-String | Copy-Item but still got all files in the source root being copied.
A contact in a different context provided a couple of suggestions:
1)
Get-ChildItem -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction Ignore -Path $packageSourcePath -Filter *.resw | % {
$src = $_.FullName
$dst = Join-Path $objPath $src.SubString($packageSourcePath.Length)
echo "copy ""$src"" ""$dst"""
}
I think this is a bit harder to follow, hence less maintainable for the next person (likely another PS-neophyte like me) a year from now. ("Why is the -ErrorAction parameter needed here? What's the behaviour of the Substring() method, and why can't I find that using Get-Help?")
This suggestion is a bit clearer, after re-familiarizing with attrib and checking the effect of the xcopy switches:
2)
cd $packageSourcePath
attrib -a /s
attrib +a *.resw /s
xcopy /eidlm $packageSourcePath $objPath
But if we're going to use xcopy, we don't need to call attrib:
xcopy $packageSourcePath*.resw $objPath /s /i > $null
The only problem with this for my scenario is that xcopy emits an error if no matching files are found. My script is being used for a VSTS build task, and the xcopy errors cause the build task to fail. (For that reason, I'm guess that suggestion 2 also wouldn't work for me.)
So, I've opted for this:
# In PS version 5.1, nothing gets copied using Copy-Item $packageSourcePath\* -Filter *.resw ...
# so resorting to using xcopy, which mostly works. The one issue is that xcopy will output an
# error if no matching file is found, so using GCI first to test for a matching file.
if ($(Get-ChildItem $packageSourcePath\*.resw -Recurse).count -gt 0) {
xcopy $packageSourcePath\*.resw $objPath /s /i > $null
}
The condition using GCI is added to check there are matching files before calling xcopy, thereby avoiding any errors.
I'm still amazed that Copy-Item -Filter -Recurse didn't work.
This should do it (obviously this could be done in 1 line; I've assigned values to the variables just to help make it readable / self-explanatory):
[string]$filter = '*.resw'
[string]$source = Join-Path -Path $packageSourcePath -ChildPath '*'
[string]$target = $objPath
$source | Convert-Path | Copy-Item -Filter $filter -Recurse -Destination $target -Container #-Force
Notes:
We append the asterisk to the source path to ensure that we copy the contents of the source folder to the destination, without copying the source's root folder into the destination (i.e. say we're copying c:\temp\from to c:\temp\to, we don't want c:\temp\to\from (unless it's a copy of c:\temp\from\from)).
We use the Join-Path cmdlet to append this asterisk to ensure the appropriate slashes are inserted into the path.
We do a Convert-Path on the source to resolve the asterisk to the child folder/file names... for some reason copy-item doesn't handle these asterisks well. NB: Convert-Path will potentially return an array of paths; i.e. if there's more than one file/subfolder directly under the source folder. Get-Item or Resolve-Path could equally be used for this; I prefer Convert-Path since it returns a simple string array, rather than a more complex type; but there's no strong argument for using any one over the others.
We pipe these source paths to the Copy-Item command so it can be applied to each path returned by Convert-Path.
We include -Recurse to say we're interested in anything in the subfolders of the copied path.
We include the -Container parameter to say that we want to preserve any folder structure when copying. Strictly this is not needed, as this switch is defaulted to true (i.e. rather we should specify if we don't want this behaviour: -Container:$false; but I like to be clear that I deliberately want to preserve the directory structure, as opposed to leaving the assumption that I may not have thought of this. There's a better explanation of this here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/21798660/361842.
You could optionally include -Force; this would mean that should an item of the same name already exist in the target we overwrite it instead of getting an error.
Related documentation:
Join-Path
Convert-Path
Copy-Item
Update 2018-01-03
Per comments, this solution should ensure that only those items you want get copied, and pre-existing directories shouldn't cause issues.
[string]$filter = '*.resw'
[string]$source = $packageSourcePath
[string]$target = $objPath
#copy all files in subfolders of the source
$source | Get-ChildItem -Directory | Copy-Item -Filter $filter -Recurse -Destination $target -Container -Force
#copy all files in root of the source
$source | Get-ChildItem -File -Filter $filter | Copy-Item -Destination $target -Container -Force
This solution uses 2 steps; there's probably a better option, but due to the peculiarities / bug in this cmdlet the above's a reliable option.
I'm writing a simple script to delete USMT migration folders after a certain amount of days:
## Server List ##
$servers = "Delorean","Adelaide","Brisbane","Melbourne","Newcastle","Perth"
## Number of days (-3 is over three days ago) ##
$days = -3
$timelimit = (Get-Date).AddDays($days)
foreach ($server in $servers)
{
$deletedusers = #()
$folders = Get-ChildItem \\$server\USMT$ | where {$_.psiscontainer}
write-host "Checking server : " $server
foreach ($folder in $folders)
{
If ($folder.LastWriteTime -lt $timelimit -And $folder -ne $null)
{
$deletedusers += $folder
Remove-Item -recurse -force $folder.fullname
}
}
write-host "Users deleted : " $deletedusers
write-host
}
However I keep hitting the dreaded Remove-Item : The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.
I've been looking at workarounds and alternatives but they all revolve around me caring what is in the folder.
I was hoping for a more simple solution as I don't really care about the folder contents if it is marked for deletion.
Is there any native Powershell cmdlet other than Remove-Item -recurse that can accomplish what I'm after?
I often have this issue with node projects. They nest their dependencies and once git cloned, it's difficult to delete them. A nice node utility I came across is rimraf.
npm install rimraf -g
rimraf <dir>
Just as CADII said in another answer: Robocopy is able to create paths longer than the limit of 260 characters. Robocopy is also able to delete such paths. You can just mirror some empty folder over your path containing too long names in case you want to delete it.
For example:
robocopy C:\temp\some_empty_dir E:\temp\dir_containing_very_deep_structures /MIR
Here's the Robocopy reference to know the parameters and various options.
I've created a PowerShell function that is able to delete a long path (>260) using the mentioned robocopy technique:
function Remove-PathToLongDirectory
{
Param(
[string]$directory
)
# create a temporary (empty) directory
$parent = [System.IO.Path]::GetTempPath()
[string] $name = [System.Guid]::NewGuid()
$tempDirectory = New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path (Join-Path $parent $name)
robocopy /MIR $tempDirectory.FullName $directory | out-null
Remove-Item $directory -Force | out-null
Remove-Item $tempDirectory -Force | out-null
}
Usage example:
Remove-PathToLongDirectory c:\yourlongPath
This answer on SuperUser solved it for me: https://superuser.com/a/274224/85532
Cmd /C "rmdir /S /Q $myDir"
I learnt a trick a while ago that often works to get around long file path issues. Apparently when using some Windows API's certain functions will flow through legacy code that can't handle long file names. However if you format your paths in a particular way, the legacy code is avoided. The trick that solves this problem is to reference paths using the "\\?\" prefix. It should be noted that not all API's support this but in this particular case it worked for me, see my example below:
The following example fails:
PS D:\> get-childitem -path "D:\System Volume Information\dfsr" -hidden
Directory: D:\System Volume Information\dfsr
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a-hs 10/09/2014 11:10 PM 834424 FileIDTable_2
-a-hs 10/09/2014 8:43 PM 3211264 SimilarityTable_2
PS D:\> Remove-Item -Path "D:\System Volume Information\dfsr" -recurse -force
Remove-Item : The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully qualified file name must be less than 260
characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters.
At line:1 char:1
+ Remove-Item -Path "D:\System Volume Information\dfsr" -recurse -force
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (D:\System Volume Information\dfsr:String) [Remove-Item], PathTooLongExcepti
on
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand
PS D:\>
However, prefixing the path with "\\?\" makes the command work successfully:
PS D:\> Remove-Item -Path "\\?\D:\System Volume Information\dfsr" -recurse -force
PS D:\> get-childitem -path "D:\System Volume Information\dfsr" -hidden
PS D:\>
If you have ruby installed, you can use Fileman:
gem install fileman
Once installed, you can simply run the following in your command prompt:
fm rm your_folder_path
This problem is a real pain in the neck when you're developing in node.js on Windows, so fileman becomes really handy to delete all the garbage once in a while
This is a known limitation of PowerShell. The work around is to use dir cmd (sorry, but this is true).
http://asysadmin.tumblr.com/post/17654309496/powershell-path-length-limitation
or as mentioned by AaronH answer use \?\ syntax is in this example to delete build
dir -Include build -Depth 1 | Remove-Item -Recurse -Path "\\?\$($_.FullName)"
If all you're doing is deleting the files, I use a function to shorten the names, then I delete.
function ConvertTo-ShortNames{
param ([string]$folder)
$name = 1
$items = Get-ChildItem -path $folder
foreach ($item in $items){
Rename-Item -Path $item.FullName -NewName "$name"
if ($item.PSIsContainer){
$parts = $item.FullName.Split("\")
$folderPath = $parts[0]
for ($i = 1; $i -lt $parts.Count - 1; $i++){
$folderPath = $folderPath + "\" + $parts[$i]
}
$folderPath = $folderPath + "\$name"
ConvertTo-ShortNames $folderPath
}
$name++
}
}
I know this is an old question, but I thought I would put this here in case somebody needed it.
There is one workaround that uses Experimental.IO from Base Class Libraries project. You can find it over on poshcode, or download from author's blog. 260 limitation is derived from .NET, so it's either this, or using tools that do not depend on .NET (like cmd /c dir, as #Bill suggested).
Combination of tools can work best, try doing a dir /x to get the 8.3 file name instead. You could then parse out that output to a text file then build a powershell script to delete the paths that you out-file'd. Take you all of a minute. Alternatively you could just rename the 8.3 file name to something shorter then delete.
For my Robocopy worked in 1, 2 and 3
First create an empty directory lets say c:\emptydir
ROBOCOPY c:\emptydir c:\directorytodelete /purge
rmdir c:\directorytodelete
This is getting old but I recently had to work around it again. I ended up using 'subst' as it didn't require any other modules or functions be available on the PC this was running from. A little more portable.
Basically find a spare drive letter, 'subst' the long path to that letter, then use that as the base for GCI.
Only limitation is that the $_.fullname and other properties will report the drive letter as the root path.
Seems to work ok:
$location = \\path\to\long\
$driveLetter = ls function:[d-z]: -n | ?{ !(test-path $_) } | random
subst $driveLetter $location
sleep 1
Push-Location $driveLetter -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Get-ChildItem -Recurse
subst $driveLetter /D
That command is obviously not to delete files but can be substituted.
PowerShell can easily be used with AlphaFS.dll to do actual file I/O stuff
without the PATH TOO LONG hassle.
For example:
Import-Module <path-to-AlphaFS.dll>
[Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.Directory]::Delete($path, $True)
Please see at Codeplex: https://alphafs.codeplex.com/ for this .NET project.
I had the same issue while trying to delete folders on a remote machine.
Nothing helped but... I found one trick :
# 1:let's create an empty folder
md ".\Empty" -erroraction silentlycontinue
# 2: let's MIR to the folder to delete : this will empty the folder completely.
robocopy ".\Empty" $foldertodelete /MIR /LOG+:$logname
# 3: let's delete the empty folder now:
remove-item $foldertodelete -force
# 4: we can delete now the empty folder
remove-item ".\Empty" -force
Works like a charm on local or remote folders (using UNC path)
Adding to Daniel Lee's solution,
When the $myDir has spaces in the middle it gives FILE NOT FOUND errors considering set of files splitted from space. To overcome this use quotations around the variable and put powershell escape character to skip the quatations.
PS>cmd.exe /C "rmdir /s /q <grave-accent>"$myDir<grave-accent>""
Please substitute the proper grave-accent character instead of <grave-accent>
SO plays with me and I can't add it :). Hope some one will update it for others to understand easily
Just for completeness, I have come across this a few more times and have used a combination of both 'subst' and 'New-PSDrive' to work around it in various situations.
Not exactly a solution, but if anyone is looking for alternatives this might help.
Subst seems very sensitive to which type of program you are using to access the files, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, seems to be the same with New-PSDrive.
Any thing developed using .NET out of the box will fail with paths too long. You will have to move them to 8.3 names, PInVoke (Win32) calls, or use robocopy