Find and delete files that DON'T contain text in filename

PowerShell Help
1

I’ve been banging my head on this one so any help is appreciated.

Desired Outcome: Automate the deletion of files that don’t contain specific text in the filename.

Strategy: Create an array of filenames in a folder. Create an array of numbers from a text file. Identify filenames that contain no instance of the numbers from the text file. Delete those files.

Code so far:

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18616581/how-to-properly-filter-multiple-strings-in-a-powershell-copy-script

# https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/cdab4808-eb91-4df3-841b-92075a6fa0fb/creating-an-array-from-the-getchilditem-cmdlet?forum=ITCG

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13998777/storing-directory-folder-names-into-array-powershell

# Put the policy files into an array called "Files"

$PolicyPath = "C:\ProgramData\LANDesk\Policies"

#[array]$Files = @(Get-ChildItem -Path $PolicyPath\* -Include *.stat, *.xml | Select-Object -ExpandProperty fullname)

[array]$Files = @(Get-ChildItem -Path $PolicyPath\* -Include *.stat, *.xml | Foreach-Object {$_.Name})

 

# https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/104056/contents-of-file-into-an-array-powershell

# Put the list of active tasks into an array called "ActiveTasks"

$ActiveTasksPath = "\\server\share"

$ActiveTasks = [string[]](Get-Content -Path $ActiveTasksPath\ActiveTasks.txt)

 

 

# Testing matching

$ActiveTasks -match ($Files -join "|")

$ActiveTasks -match $Files[135] | Foreach-object { "$_ should be kept" }

The result of the matching above turns out all the numbers in $ActiveTasks.

I’ve tried other comparison and they didn’t work either.

 

Thanks for reading my post!

 

 

 

2

Try below code,

$ActiveTasks = (Get-Content -Path \\server\share\ActiveTasks.txt ) -join "|" 
$FilesToDelete = Get-ChildItem -Path $PolicyPath\* -Filter *.stat,*.xml | Where-Object -FilterScript { $_.BaseName -notmatch $ActiveTasks }
3

I’ve never had much luck with -Include, but if I did something like this:

$Files = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Scripts\*.xml','C:\Scripts\*.stat'

I have 3 stat files…

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $Files = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Scripts\*.xml','C:\Scripts\*.stat'

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $Files


    Directory: C:\Scripts


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                                                                                  
----                -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                                                                                  
-a----        8/17/2018   4:08 PM              0 friday123.stat                                                                                                                                                        
-a----        8/17/2018   4:08 PM              0 saturday123.stat                                                                                                                                                      
-a----        8/17/2018   4:08 PM              0 thursday123.stat

Let’s say I wanted to delete files that were not saturday, because I get to sleep in:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $files | Where{$_.BaseName -notlike 'saturday*'}


    Directory: C:\Scripts


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name                                                                                                                                                                  
----                -------------         ------ ----                                                                                                                                                                  
-a----        8/17/2018   4:08 PM              0 friday123.stat                                                                                                                                                        
-a----        8/17/2018   4:08 PM              0 thursday123.stat

To remove the files, you would just pipe them to Remove-Item

$filesToDelete = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Scripts\*.xml','C:\Scripts\*.stat' |
                 Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.BaseName -notlike 'saturday*'}
            

$filesToDelete | Remove-Item -Force -WhatIf