How do I use a variable in a UNC path in powershell?

Question

I'm trying to count the contents of a folder on a remote server.

I know that:

Get-ChildItem \\ServerName\c$\foldername -recurse | Measure-Object -property length -sum

works a treat.

However I'm trying to make the server name a variable, by user input, but I can't get the path to accept any variable.

Keith Hill · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-15 15:54:44Z

7

It's pretty straightforward:

$server = Read-Host "Enter server name"
Get-ChildItem \\$server\users -recurse | measure-object length -sum

answered Dec 15, 2009 at 15:54

Keith Hill

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5 Comments

Silver_Hammer Over a year ago

I wonder then if this is a powershell version problem, because I can't get that to work. I get a: "Cannot find path '\\servername\C$\foldername' because it does not exist." error

Silver_Hammer Over a year ago

Well I've downloaded v 2.0 and I still can't get that to work. It looks like it -should- work. I must be missing something obvious here.

Keith Hill Over a year ago

Dunno. It works for me on V2 gci \\$servername\c$\users. BTW if servername is a variable it must be \\$servername\c$.

Silver_Hammer Over a year ago

Ended up using: $server = Read-Host "Enter server name" $share = Read-Host "Enter share name" Get-ChildItem "\\$server\$share" -recurse | measure-object length -sum Thanks Keith

Goyuix Over a year ago

I just verified this works for me in V1 of PowerShell. I also experimented with various double and single quotes and found that it behaves best without quoting at all.

Jonny · Accepted Answer · 2009-12-22 12:50:44Z

2

If you are doing this in the shell and you want a one-liner, try this:

Get-ChildItem "\\$(Read-Host)\share" -recurse | Measure-Object length -sum

This won't produce a message asking for input, but saves assigning to a variable that you may not need, and if you are running this from the shell then you know the input that is needed anyway!

Also double quotes will mean a variable is evaluated so:

$hello = "Hello World"
Write-Host "$hello"
Hello world

Or as Keith Hill has pointed out:

$hello = "Hello World"
Write-Host $hello
Hello World

Where as single quotes won't evaluate the variable so:

$hello = "Hello World"
Write-Host '$hello'
$hello

So if you are using variables and you have spaces in the path use " ".

edited Dec 22, 2009 at 12:50

answered Dec 17, 2009 at 21:36

Jonny

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2 Comments

Keith Hill Over a year ago

In your Write-Host example no quotes are needed at all. Even in the context of command mode parsing, you don't need double quotes around a variable. Try this on V2 - gci $pshome\modules - look ma - no quotes. :-)

Jonny Over a year ago

@Keith Thanks for the comment, that is true, but the reason I put them to demonstrate the difference in behaviour between double and single quotes. I have amended the example to demo this out though. Thanks for pointing that out. :-)

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