Working with Files and Folders

PowerShell – Working with Files and Folders

Creating Folders and Files

We use the cmdlet New-Item to create a folder or a file. We need to specify the Item type (the FileSystem Windows PowerShell provider distinguishes between directories and files).

The following command creates a new folder in the present working directory.

PS C:\temp> New-Item folder1 -ItemType Directory

Directory: C:\temp
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d----- 1/7/2018 12:24 AM folder1

We can also create a folder or file directly by giving a path.

PS C:\temp> New-Item c:\temp\folder2 -ItemType Directory

Directory: C:\temp
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d----- 1/7/2018 12:28 AM folder2

PS C:\Users\Wintel> New-Item c:\temp\folder2\textfile.txt -ItemType File

    Directory: C:\temp\folder2

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        20-02-2020     23:41              0 textfile.txt

The above command will create a file textfile.txt in the given path C:\temp\folder2\ (The folder should exist before creating the file)

Listing all files and folders in a folder

You can get all items directly within a folder by using Get-ChildItem. By default, Get-ChildItem does not display system files and hidden files. If you want to include those files, add an optional parameter Force. If you want to list files and folders of sub folders as well, add Recurse option.

Get-ChildItem

Get-ChildItem C:\temp\

Get-ChildItem C:\Windows\System32\ -Force -Recurse

Copying Files and Folders

Copying is done with Copy-Item.

Copy-Item C:\temp\folder2\textfile.txt c:\temp\folder1\

If the file is already there in the destination folder, you can use -Force option. This will replace the existing file.

Copy-Item C:\temp\folder2\textfile.txt c:\temp\folder1\ -Force

The following command will copy all content in the folder to a new path.

Copy-Item C:\temp C:\temp2 -Recurse -Force

Removing All Files and Folders Within a Folder

You can remove contained items using Remove-Item. It will prompt if there is any content in the folder.

Remove-Item C:\temp2

Remove-Item C:\temp2 -Recurse -Force

Reading Text Files

Get-Content is used to read the content of a file into an array.

Let us create a text file for testing.

PS C:\temp> New-Item test.txt -ItemType File

Directory: C:\temp

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a---- 1/7/2018 7:19 PM 0 test.txt

Add some content to the file

PS C:\temp> Add-Content .\test.txt "This is first line"

PS C:\temp> Add-Content .\test.txt "This is second line"

PS C:\temp> Add-Content .\test.txt "third line"

PS C:\temp> Add-Content .\test.txt "fourth line"

PS C:\temp> Add-Content .\test.txt "fifth line"

Now read content of the file using Get-Content

PS C:\temp> Get-Content .\test.txt

This is first line
This is second line
third line
fourth line
fifth line
PS C:\temp>

We can also assign the output to a variable. The result will be stored as an array. If you want to display the first line only, try the following:

PS C:\temp> $content = Get-Content .\test.txt
PS C:\temp> $content[0]
This is first line