Limit Get-ChildItem recursion depth

Question

I can get all sub-items recursively using this command   Get-ChildItem -recurse   But is there a way to limit the depth  If I only want to recurse one or two levels down for example

User · Answer

I tried to limit Get-ChildItem recursion depth using Resolve-Path

$PATH = "."
$folder = get-item $PATH 
$FolderFullName = $Folder.FullName
$PATHs = Resolve-Path $FolderFullName\*\*\*\
$Folders = $PATHs | get-item | where {$_.PsIsContainer}

But this works fine :

gci "$PATH\*\*\*\*"

User · Answer

scanlegentil I like this  A little improvement would be    Depth   2  Path         Levels           Depth  Folder   Get-Item  Path  FolderFullName    Folder FullName Resolve-Path  FolderFullName Levels   Get-Item         PsIsContainer    Write-Host   As mentioned  this would only scan the specified depth  so this modification is an improvement    StartLevel   1   0   include base folder  1   sub-folders only  2   start at 2nd level  Depth   2        How many levels deep to scan  Path             starting path  For   i  StartLevel   i -le  Depth   i           Levels           i      Resolve-Path  Path Levels  ProviderPath   Get-Item   Where PsIsContainer       Select FullName

User · Answer

As of powershell 5 0  you can now use the -Depth parameter in Get-ChildItem   You combine it with -Recurse to limit the recursion   Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Depth 2

User · Answer

This is a function that outputs one line per item  with indentation according to depth level  It is probably much more readable   function GetDirs  path    pwd   Byte  ToDepth   255   Byte  CurrentDepth   0         CurrentDepth       If   CurrentDepth -le  ToDepth            foreach   item in Get-ChildItem  path                        if  Test-Path  item FullName -PathType Container                                       CurrentDepth    item FullName                 GetDirs  item FullName -ToDepth  ToDepth -CurrentDepth  CurrentDepth                                   It is based on a blog post  Practical PowerShell  Pruning File Trees and Extending Cmdlets

User · Answer

Use this to limit the depth to 2  Get-ChildItem                 The way it works is that it returns the children at each depth 2 1 and 0   Explanation  This command Get-ChildItem         returns all items with a depth of two subfolders  Adding    adds an additional subfolder to search in  In line with the OP question  to limit a recursive search using get-childitem you are required to specify all the depths that can be searched

User · Answer

Try this function   Function Get-ChildItemToDepth       Param           String  Path    PWD           String  Filter                 Byte  ToDepth   255           Byte  CurrentDepth   0           Switch  DebugMode             CurrentDepth       If   DebugMode             DebugPreference    Continue             Get-ChildItem  Path                         Name -Like  Filter            If     PsIsContainer                If   CurrentDepth -le  ToDepth                       Callback to this function                 Get-ChildItemToDepth -Path    FullName -Filter  Filter                     -ToDepth  ToDepth -CurrentDepth  CurrentDepth                           Else                   Write-Debug    Skipping GCI for Folder       FullName                            Why  Current depth  CurrentDepth vs limit depth  ToDepth                                      source

[powershell] Limit Get-ChildItem recursion depth

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