How can I exclude multiple folders using Get-ChildItem -exclude?

I need to generate a configuration file for our Pro/Engineer CAD system. I need a recursive list of the folders from a particular drive on our server. However I need to EXCLUDE any folder with 'ARCHIVE' in it including the various different cases.

I've written the following which works except it doesn't exclude the folders !!

$folder = "T:\Drawings\Design\*"
$raw_txt = "T:\Design Projects\Design_Admin\PowerShell\raw.txt"
$search_pro = "T:\Design Projects\Design_Admin\PowerShell\search.pro"
$archive = *archive*,*Archive*,*ARCHIVE*

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Exclude $archive -Recurse  | where {$_.Attributes -match 'Directory'}  | ForEach-Object {$_.FullName} > $search_pro   

My KISS approach to skip some folders is chaining Get-ChildItem calls. This excludes root level folders but not deeper level folders if that is what you want.

Get-ChildItem -Exclude folder1,folder2 | Get-ChildItem -Recurse | ...

• Start excluding folders you don't want
• Then do the recursive search with non desired folders excluded.

What I like from this approach is that it is simple and easy to remember. If you don't want to mix folders and files in the first search a filter would be needed.

I'd do it like this:

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -r  | 
? { $_.PsIsContainer -and $_.FullName -notmatch 'archive' }

Note that -notmatch accepts a Regular Expression:

https://docs.microsoft.com/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/where-object#parameters

I apologize if this answer seems like duplication of previous answers. I just wanted to show an updated (tested through POSH 5.0) way of solving this. The previous answers were pre-3.0 and not as efficient as modern solutions.

The documentation isn't clear on this, but Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Exclude only matches exclusion on the leaf (Split-Path $_.FullName -Leaf), not the parent path (Split-Path $_.FullName -Parent). Matching the exclusion will just remove the item with the matching leaf; Get-ChildItem will still recurse into that leaf.

In POSH 1.0 or 2.0

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Recurse  | 
          ? { $_.PsIsContainer -and $_.FullName -inotmatch 'archive' }

Note: Same answer as @CB.

In POSH 3.0+

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Directory -Recurse  | 
          ? { $_.FullName -inotmatch 'archive' }

Note: Updated answer from @CB.

Multiple Excludes

This specifically targets directories while excluding leafs with the Exclude parameter, and parents with the ilike (case-insensitive like) comparison:

#Requires -Version 3.0
[string[]]$Paths = @('C:\Temp', 'D:\Temp')
[string[]]$Excludes = @('*archive*', '*Archive*', '*ARCHIVE*', '*archival*')

$files = Get-ChildItem $Paths -Directory -Recurse -Exclude $Excludes | %{ 
    $allowed = $true
    foreach ($exclude in $Excludes) { 
        if ((Split-Path $_.FullName -Parent) -ilike $exclude) { 
            $allowed = $false
            break
        }
    }
    if ($allowed) {
        $_
    }
}

Note: If you want your $Excludes to be case-sensitive, there are two steps:

1. Remove the Exclude parameter from Get-ChildItem.
2. Change the first if condition to:
   • if ($_.FullName -clike $exclude) {

Note: This code has redundancy that I would never implement in production. You should simplify this quite a bit to fit your exact needs. It serves well as a verbose example.

The exclusion pattern should be case-insensitive, so you shouldn't have to specify every case for the exclusion.

That said, the -Exclude parameter accepts an array of strings, so as long as you define $archive as such, you should be set.

$archive = ("*archive*","*Archive*","*ARCHIVE*");

You also should drop the trailing asterisk from $folder - since you're specifying -recurse, you should only need to give the top-level folder.

$folder = "T:\Drawings\Design\"

Fully revised script. This also changes how you detect whether you've found a directory, and skips the Foreach-Object because you can just pull the property directly & dump it all to the file.

$folder = "T:\Drawings\Design\";
$raw_txt = "T:\Design Projects\Design_Admin\PowerShell\raw.txt";
$search_pro = "T:\Design Projects\Design_Admin\PowerShell\search.pro";
$archive = ("*archive*","*Archive*","*ARCHIVE*");

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Exclude $archive -Recurse  | where {$_.PSIsContainer}  | select-Object -expandproperty FullName |out-file $search_pro 

I know this is quite old - but searching for an easy solution, I stumbled over this thread... If I got the question right, you were looking for a way to list more than one directory using Get-ChildItem. There seems to be a much easier way using powershell 5.0 - example

Get-ChildItem -Path D:\ -Directory -Name -Exclude tmp,music
   chaos
   docs
   downloads
   games
   pics
   videos

Without the -Exclude clause, tmp and music would still be in that list. If you don't use -Name the -Exclude clause won't work, because of the detailed output of Get-ChildItem. Hope this helps some people that are looking for an easy way to list all directory names without certain ones.

You can exclude like this, the regex 'or' symbol, assuming a file you want doesn't have the same name as a folder you're excluding.

$exclude = 'dir1|dir2|dir3'
ls -r | where { $_.fullname -notmatch $exclude }

ls -r -dir | where fullname -notmatch 'dir1|dir2|dir3'

VertigoRay, in his answer, explained that -Exclude works only at the leaf level of a path (for a file the filename with path stripped out; for a sub-directory the directory name with path stripped out). So it looks like -Exclude cannot be used to specify a directory (eg "bin") and exclude all the files and sub-directories within that directory.

Here's a function to exclude files and sub-directories of one or more directories (I know this is not directly answering the question but I thought it might be useful in getting around the limitations of -Exclude):

$rootFolderPath = 'C:\Temp\Test'
$excludeDirectories = ("bin", "obj");

function Exclude-Directories
{
    process
    {
        $allowThrough = $true
        foreach ($directoryToExclude in $excludeDirectories)
        {
            $directoryText = "*\" + $directoryToExclude
            $childText = "*\" + $directoryToExclude + "\*"
            if (($_.FullName -Like $directoryText -And $_.PsIsContainer) `
                -Or $_.FullName -Like $childText)
            {
                $allowThrough = $false
                break
            }
        }
        if ($allowThrough)
        {
            return $_
        }
    }
}

Clear-Host

Get-ChildItem $rootFolderPath -Recurse `
    | Exclude-Directories

For a directory tree:

C:\Temp\Test\
|
├╴SomeFolder\
|  |
|  └╴bin (file without extension)
|
└╴MyApplication\
  |
  ├╴BinFile.txt
  ├╴FileA.txt
  ├╴FileB.txt
  |
  └╴bin\
    |
    └╴Debug\
      |
      └╴SomeFile.txt

The result is:

C:\Temp\Test\
|
├╴SomeFolder\
|  |
|  └╴bin (file without extension)
|
└╴MyApplication\
  |
  ├╴BinFile.txt
  ├╴FileA.txt
  └╴FileB.txt

It excludes the bin\ sub-folder and all its contents but does not exclude files Bin.txt or bin (file named "bin" without an extension).

The simplest short form to me is something like:

#find web forms in my project except in compilation directories
(gci -recurse -path *.aspx,*.ascx).fullname -inotmatch '\\obj\\|\\bin\\'

And if you need more complex logic then use a filter:

  filter Filter-DirectoryBySomeLogic{
  
      param(
      [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipeline=$true)]
      $fsObject,
      [switch]$exclude
      )
          
      if($fsObject -is [System.IO.DirectoryInfo])
      {
          $additional_logic = $true ### replace additional logic here
  
          if($additional_logic){
              if(!$exclude){ return $fsObject }
          }
          elseif($exclude){ return $fsObject }
      }
          
  }
  
  gci -Directory -Recurse | Filter-DirectoryBySomeLogic | ....

Based on @NN_ comment on @Guillem answer, I came up with the below code. This allows you to exclude folders and files:

Get-ChildItem -Exclude 'folder-to-exclude','second-folder-exclude' |
foreach {
    Get-ChildItem -Path $_ -Exclude 'files-to-exclude','*.zip','*.mdmp','*.out*','*.log' -Recurse |
    Select-String -Pattern 'string-to-look-for' -List
}

You could also do this in a single statement:

$j = "Somepath"
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $j -Include '*.xlsx','*.zip' -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue –File | ? {$_.Directory -notlike "$j\donotwantfoldername"}

This is how I did it:

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Name | ? {$_ -notmatch 'node_modules' }

This lists the full path of every file recursively that does NOT contains node_modules in its path. You should obviously change node_modules with any string you want to filter

#For brevity, I didn't define a function.

#Place the directories you want to exclude in this array.
#Case insensitive and exact match. So 'archive' and
#'ArcHive' will match but 'BuildArchive' will not.
$noDirs = @('archive')

#Build a regex using array of excludes
$excRgx = '^{0}$' -f ($noDirs -join ('$|^'))

#Rather than use the gci -Recurse option, use a more
#performant approach by not processing the match(s) as
#soon as they are located.
$cmd = {
  Param([string]$Path)
  Get-ChildItem $Path -Directory |
  ForEach-Object {
    if ($_.Name -inotmatch $excRgx) {
      #Recurse back into the scriptblock
      Invoke-Command $cmd -ArgumentList $_.FullName;
      #If you want all directory info change to return $_
      return $_.FullName
    }
  }
}

#In this example, start with the current directory
$searchPath = .
#Start the Recursion
Invoke-Command $cmd -ArgumentList $searchPath

I wanted a solution that didn't involve looping over every single item and doing ifs. Here's a solution that is just a simple recursive function over Get-ChildItem. We just loop and recurse over directories.

function Get-RecurseItem {
    [Cmdletbinding()]
    param (
        [Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)][string]$Path,
        [string[]]$Exclude = @(),
        [string]$Include = '*'
    )
    Get-ChildItem -Path (Join-Path $Path '*') -Exclude $Exclude -Directory | ForEach-Object {
        @(Get-ChildItem -Path (Join-Path $_ '*') -Include $Include -Exclude $Exclude -File) + ``
        @(Get-RecurseItem -Path $_ -Include $Include -Exclude $Exclude)
    }
}

$CurrentPath = (Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem).ProviderPath # Or your favorite path
$IncludeNames = "okFolder1", "okFolder2"  # Items names to search
$ExcludeNames = "koFolder1", "koFolder2"  # Items names not to search
$depth = 3                                # Max level of depth to search

$FoldersToRemove = Get-ChildItem .\ -include $IncludeNames -Recurse -Depth $depth 
-Attributes D                             # If you want only directories, change it as you desire
| ? { $_.fullname -inotmatch ($ExcludeNames -join '|') }  #case insensitive or use -cnotmatch for case sensitive comparison
| foreach {$_.fullname}                   # If you want to project only full path information of matches

Here is another method using a remote server. The task here is to get a list of folders but exclude a number of well known folders on the remote server's C: drive. The final variable $AllFolders contains the result.

$Server          = "<ServerName>"
$TopFolder       = "\\$Server\C$"    
$Exclude         = @("*Inetpub*")
$Exclude        += "*Program Files*"
$Exclude        += "*Program Files (x86)*"
$Exclude        += "*Windows*"

$ServerFolders   = Get-ChildItem -Path $TopFolder -Exclude $Exclude | where {$_.PSIsContainer} 
ForEach ($ServerFolder in $ServerFolders)
{
 $CurrentFolders = Get-ChildItem -path $ServerFolder -recurse | Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer } 
 $AllFolders     = $AllFolders + $CurrentFolders
}

Simpliest form in my opinion. Use -NotMatch on Fullname. Yes, it needs a recent version of PowerShell because I use -Directory.

$folder = "T:\Drawings\Design\*"
$search_pro = "T:\Design Projects\Design_Admin\PowerShell\search.pro"
$archive = 'archive'

Get-ChildItem -Path $folder -Directory | Where-Object Fullname -NotMatch $archive | Select-Object Fullname | Out-File $search_pro

I needed to exclude specific paths, not just directories of the same name anywhere in the tree, so I built on Jason Brower's answer to match directory paths instead of their names.

Solutions like Get-Childitem filespec -Recurse | Where-Object {$_ -excludecondition} do work, but they unnecessarily look into the excluded folders before dismissing them which can get expensive. (With pipes: "Filter left, process right")

$strSearchPath = 'D:\Project'
# Files to search for
$arFilePatterns = @(
    '*.ps?',
    '*.cmd'
)

# Directories to skip
# Example: you got 'Archive', 'Archive.old', 'Archive.bak' and want to include only 'Archive' in the search

# (think) exact matches
$arSkipDirs = @(
    'D:\Project\Archive.old',
    'D:\Project\Archive.bak'
)
# (think) wildcard to the right
<#
$arSkipDirs = @(
    'D:\Project\Archive.'
)
#>

Function ListDirsSkipSome ($strPath, $strExcludeRegEx) {
    Get-ChildItem -Path $strPath -Directory | 
    ForEach-Object {
        if ($_.FullName -inotmatch $strExcludeRegEx) {
            # recurse down the tree
            ListDirsSkipSome $_.FullName $strExcludeRegEx
            return $_.FullName
        }
    }
}

#Build a regex using array of excludes
# exact matches
$strRegEx = '^{0}$' -f (($arSkipDirs | ForEach-Object { [regex]::Escape($_) }) -join ('$|^'))
# wildcards to the right
#$strRegEx = '^{0}' -f (($arSkipDirs | ForEach-Object { [regex]::Escape($_) }) -join ('|^'))

# include root of search path
$arSearchDirs = @($strSearchPath)
# add list of directories excluding some
$arSearchDirs += ListDirsSkipSome $strSearchPath $strRegEx

# save current directory
$strPWD = (Get-Location).Path

# find files in listed dirs
# set type in case there is only 1 result
[array]$arSearchResult = $arSearchDirs |
ForEach-Object {
    # dive into each directory
    Set-Location -Path $_
    # list files matching patterns
    (Get-ChildItem -File -Path $arFilePatterns).FullName
}

# return to previous directory
Set-Location -Path $strPWD

$arSearchResult

may be in your case you could reach this with the following:

    mv excluded_dir ..\
    ls -R 
    mv ..\excluded_dir .