Powershell delete all files directory

The third way I want to illustrate uses the. NET Framework System. Directory class to delete a folder. It is a bit more complicated. For one thing, it does not like wild cards in the path. An example of this is shown in the image that follows. The solution is to use Windows PowerShell to obtain the folders to delete, and then use the ForEach-Object cmdlet to call the method.

The code to do this is shown here. BR, that is all there is to using Windows PowerShell to delete folders. Join me tomorrow when I talk about more cool stuff. I invite you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter microsoft.

See you tomorrow. Until then, peace. Comments are closed. Scripting Forums. PowerShell Forums. PowerShell on TechCommunity. When working in PowerShell, using Remove-Item or del will run the same command. The first example that would be most useful is the most basic — that is, deleting a single file. To delete just a single file, you only need to use the command below.

Running the code above in PowerShell would not show anything on the screen unless an error was encountered. In this example, the code below deletes all files in a folder. The -File parameter indicates that the only type of item to be included are files. Get-ChildItem ignores folders. If you need to also delete the files inside every sub-directory, you need to add the -Recurse switch to the Get-ChildItem cmdlet to get all files recursively.

Running the above code forces PowerShell to look into all sub-folders and retrieve all the list of files. The output below shows that the code was able to delete files in the top folder; however, it failed to retrieve the files in the sub-folders.

That error is indicative that the path the cmdlet is trying to get to does not exist — which is misleading. In this case, the error was because the path that the Get-ChildItem is trying to read exceeds the maximum path length of characters. The screenshot below shows that the path or directory and its sub-directories exist and one text file named InTooDeep. The combination of all the characters that make up the nested directory names creates a long path problem.

In Windows PowerShell 5. The workaround is to use the Unicode version of the path. Using the modified code above that caters to the long path name, the output below shows that PowerShell read the deeply nested path name successfully and deleted the file.

Note that the long path name problem does not affect PowerShell 7. With PowerShell 7. If the folders need to be deleted, too, just remove the -File parameter from the Get-ChildItem cmdlet, and PowerShell should delete all items, including files and folders. Another typical example of disk space housekeeping is deleting files that are older than a specific number of days.

This example is useful for removing old log files, like those generated by IIS web servers, to free up disk space. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are files that are 15 days old, 7 days old, and 0 days old. Now that you know the files to remove, you can create a script to only delete files that are older than a specific number of days — in this case, older than 14 days. The first line defines the path for Get-ChildItem to search.

Then, the second line is where the threshold is specified. The cmdlet cannot remove constant aliases or variables. Implementation varies from provider to provider.

Even using the Force parameter, the cmdlet cannot override security restrictions. Specifies, as a string array, an item or items that this cmdlet includes in the operation. Specifies a path to one or more locations. The value of LiteralPath is used exactly as it is typed. No characters are interpreted as wildcards. If the path includes escape characters, enclose it in single quotation marks.

Single quotation marks tell PowerShell not to interpret any characters as escape sequences. Indicates that this cmdlet deletes the items in the specified locations and in all child items of the locations. The Recurse parameter might not delete all subfolders or all child items. This is a known issue. This parameter works only in file system drives.

You can use Remove-Item to delete an alternative data stream, such as Zone. However, it is not the recommended way to eliminate security checks that block files that are downloaded from the Internet. If you verify that a downloaded file is safe, use the Unblock-File cmdlet.

This parameter was introduced in Windows PowerShell 3. As of Windows PowerShell 7. The Remove-Item cmdlet is designed to work with the data exposed by any provider. To list the providers available in your session, type Get-PsProvider. When you try to delete a folder that contains items without using the Recurse parameter, the cmdlet prompts for confirmation. This is by design. Skip to main content. This browser is no longer supported.

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