A list of Powershell Get-ChildItem examples

Question: How can list out all the items in a specified location using Powershell?

Answer: Use the  Get-ChildItem cmdlet . This cmdlet takes the DIR command and extends it into a flexible and powerful cmdlet.

This cmdlet will return the items in multiple locations.  An item can be a container – in that case it will return all the items in the container – known as child items.

A note on locations. Directories are typical locations , but other locations can be registries .

#An example of listing items in a directory
 Get-ChildItem -path "C:\laboratory"
 
#An example of listing items in a directory and -include 
 Get-ChildItem -path "C:\laboratory\*.*" -include *.txt
 
#An example of listing items in a directory and -exclude 
 Get-ChildItem -path "C:\laboratory\*.*" -exclude *.txt
 

#An example of listing the items, filtering name and length and using sort-object
Get-ChildItem -path "C:\laboratory"| select name,length | sort-object -property length

#An example to return the environment variables
Get-ChildItem env:

#An example of obtaining subkey information
Get-ChildItem HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\

#An example to list all items with recurse
Get-ChildItem -path "C:\laboratory\" –Recurse

#Warning!!!!!!!!!!!!! This example DELETES all items at path 
Get-ChildItem -path "C:\laboratory\removeitem\" -Recurse | remove-item

 It is not always possible to use Powerrshell. An alternative to Powershell Get-ChildItem is Display all files in a directory with master.sys.xp_dirtree

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