How to delete all folders with a specific name using powershell

Question

I have got a folder from where I have to delete all the subfolders having name like "tempspecssuite_"

My folder structure is like below

1. Folder1
   • src
   • target
   • tempspecssuite_0
   • tempspecssuite_1

I want recursively delete the folders with name like tempspecssuite_

I tried using below command but it didn't work

Get-Childitem -path C:folder1 -Recurse | where-object {$_.Name -ilike "*tempspecssuite_*"} | Remove-Item -Force -WhatIf

Answer 1

Pipeline objects need to be referenced with $_, not $, as shown below:

Get-Childitem -Path C:folder1 -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.Name -ilike "*tempspecssuite*"} | Remove-Item -Force -WhatIf

Which can also be referenced with $PSItem or set to a custom variable with the -PipelineVariable common parameter. You can find out more in about_pipelines,about_objects and about_automatic_variables.

You could also simplify the above by making use of the -Filter parameter from Get-ChildItem, which also accepts wildcards:

Get-ChildItem -Path C:folder1 -Directory -Filter tempspecssuite_* -Recurse | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -WhatIf

Which allows Get-ChildItem to filter files while they are getting retrieved, rather than filtering with Where-Object afterwards.

You can also limit the filtering with the -Directory switch, since we only care about deleting directories.