Get-ChildItem - Can't Exclude Folders

[aksarben]

Prerequisites

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• Refer to Differences between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell.

Steps to reproduce

I’m calling Get-ChildItem as shown below. I need it to skip folders in the directory tree that have the strings test, prototype or _vti in the name. None of the excluded folders are at the top of the tree.

Write-Host  "Looking for new & changed files in $LocalRoot & subfolders"
$exclusions = @("*test*","*prototype*","*_vti*")
Write-Host  "Exclusions: $exclusions`n"
$stopwatch  = [system.diagnostics.stopwatch]::StartNew()
$files      = Get-ChildItem -Path $LocalRoot -Recurse -Attributes Archive -Exclude $exclusions

Before terminating, the script produces this output:

CONFIGURATION DATA:

        LocalRoot=C:/Users/Dick/Documents/tch/site
        ServerRoot=/
        SiteNameInWinSCP=CyberHymnalSFTP

Looking for new & changed files in C:/Users/Dick/Documents/tch/site & subfolders
Exclusions: *test* *prototype* *_vti*
**```**

### Expected behavior

```console
The script should report the number of files found.

Actual behavior

The script aborts with an error after a few minutes

Error details

**Cannot bind parameter 'Property'. Cannot convert the "C:\Users\Dick\Documents\tch\site\img\b\e\e\s\_vti_cnf\beesley_e.jpg" value of type "System.IO.FileInfo" to type "Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.PSPropertyExpression".**

As you can see, the file is in a folder named **_vti_cnf**, which should have been excluded from the search.

Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

Environment data

Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      7.3.4
PSEdition                      Core
GitCommitId                    7.3.4
OS                             Microsoft Windows 10.0.19045
Platform                       Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion              3.0

Visuals

[mkht]

-Exclude only matches the name of the item, not the name of the parent directory.
An easy workaround is to filter by Where-Object.

$exclusionPattern = @("test","prototype","_vti") -join "|"
$item = Get-ChildItem -Path $LocalRoot -Recurse -Attributes Archive | Where-Object FullName -notmatch $exclusionPattern

[aksarben]

Wow. That seems to do the trick. Could someone add that example to the Get-ChildItem documentation?

…

___________________________ The Cyber Hymnal™ <>< http://www.hymntime.com/tch

[kilasuit]

@aksarben the docs are open source so you could raise a PR for this if you wanted to - the repo for that is at PowerShell-Docs

However I have flagged this for the docs team, just in case that you don't feel confident in adding an example (though it's really not that difficult once you understand how to)

This issue has been marked as answered and has not had any activity for 1 day. It has been closed for housekeeping purposes.