As I mentioned in question, this seems like bug in Powershell engine.
When I try to print the files in the current directory(where the said powershell script is also present) by excluding some file-types(extensions), it doesn't print anything. For eg. below codes print contents of Current Folder in the Powershell console:
gci
gci -pa .
Both the above codes print the directory contents as below:
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a---- 20-09-2020 22:37 835799796 file1.mkv
-a---- 20-09-2020 22:25 148 file1.srt
-a---- 23-09-2020 04:53 357 scriptv1.ps1
-a---- 20-09-2020 22:25 678 file1.txt
But when I run below code, it doesn't print anything, when it must print file1.txt:
$excluded = @('*.mkv','*.mp4','*.srt','*.sub','*.ps1')
Get-ChildItem -Exclude $excluded | Write-Host { $_.FullName }
Can anyone assist figuring out why is it happening and how to get what I mentioned ?
The use of -Exclude with Get-ChildItem is not intuitive. To get consistent results with Get-ChildItem, you must qualify your path with \* or use the -Recurse switch. If you do not care to recurse, you can just use Get-Item with a \* qualifying the path.
# Works but includes all subdirectory searches
Get-ChildItem -Path .\* -Exclude $excluded
Get-ChildItem -Path .\* -Exclude $excluded -File
Get-ChildItem -Path . -Exclude $excluded -File -Recurse
# Best results for one directory
Get-Item -Path .\* -Exclude $excluded
The reason recursion should be used is because -Exclude values are applied to the leaf of -Path value first. If any of those exclusions match your target directory, then it will be excluded and prevent any of its items from being displayed. See below:
$path = 'c:\temp'
# produces nothing because t* matches temp
Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Exclude 't*'