powershell set variable then pass to filter?

Question

I need to filter 30 types of file from 2T of data, i want to set a variable for get-childitem then pass to -filter for different type of files, but it doesn't work.....any idea why? The idea was if I use get-childitem 30 times it will slow down the system, so I only want to do it once and set the output as a variable and use it for filtering different types of files.

$a = Get-ChildItem -Recurse c:\work 
$a -filter .prt | .............

Any suggestion please!

I'll suggest you limit your questions to one specific question at a time. Throwing a laundry list of questions into one thread results in questions that don't match the title and makes it hard for others to search for them later, and difficult for people to give you a comprehensive answer that covers all of them. — mjolinor
– mjolinor, Commented Mar 27, 2014 at 19:51

Kohlbrr · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-27 20:10:19Z

2

You can use Where-Object and filter off of the Name parameter. You can't use -filter on a variable.

Also, you need a wildcard to filter all files ending with ".prt" (if that's what you're trying to do).

$a = Get-ChildItem -Recurse c:\work
$a | Where-Object {$_.Name -like '*.prt'} | ...

edited Mar 27, 2014 at 20:10

answered Mar 27, 2014 at 20:04

Kohlbrr

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2 Comments

Root Loop Over a year ago

In my script i need to filter 30 types of file from 2T of data, if i add -filter to get-childitem, so I need to get-childitem for 30 times, it will slow down the system. The idea was to get result of get-childitem only once as a variable for later use. since the -filter can't be used on variables, maybe better just output get-childitem to txt file and search from there then. any better idea?

Kohlbrr Over a year ago

Realized the answer wasn't sufficient right after I posted it. It's been updated since to address the issue.

nimizen · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-28 10:54:13Z

0

It is usually best to include only the data you're after rather than filtering it from a larger collection; consider using the -include parameter to achieve this. For example:

#Non-recursive
$fileTypes = @("*.prt","*.doc")
$a = Get-ChildItem c:\work\* -include $fileTypes

#Recursive
$fileTypes = @("*.prt","*.doc")
$a = Get-ChildItem c:\work\* -include $fileTypes -recurse

answered Mar 28, 2014 at 10:54

nimizen

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2 Comments

Root Loop Over a year ago

ThanKs for your answer, I tried your way, it took longer time to process than filtering each type of file separately and the results were not accurate after comparing results made by 2 ways

JasonMArcher Over a year ago

Yes, -Filter directly on Get-ChildItem is the fastest because it is the filesystem that does the filtering. But that filtering method is also simpler than what the cmdlets give you.

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