Rename and copy select files in nested directory Powershell

Question

I cannot seem to rename let alone copy any text files using this code, I am trying to go through a nested directory which should be taken care of with Get-ChildItem -Recurse.

It seems like I am only going through the selected source folder's files instead of fully recursing through all of the subfolders.

A sample text file in the directory would be 02-01-2016 Test.txt

$InputDate = Read-Host -Param 'Please select a starting date (In the following format: mmddyyyy)'
$Date = [datetime]::ParseExact($InputDate, "MMddyyyy", [Globalization.CultureInfo]::CreateSpecificCulture('en-US'), $null)
$Dst = Select-FolderDialog #This function is working for me, assume you can select a folder
$Src = 'C:\Users\Bart Zhang\Downloads\Test Folder (1)\Test Folder' # #source
$FileType = '*.txt'

Get-ChildItem -Path $Src -Recurse -Force | Where-Object {$_.Name -notcontains "Archive"} | ForEach-Object {
    $DateStr = $_.BaseName.Substring(0, 2) + $_.BaseName.Substring(3, 2) + $_.BaseName.Substring(6, 4)  
    $FileDate = [datetime]::ParseExact($DateStr, "MMddyyyy", [Globalization.CultureInfo]::CreateSpecificCulture('en-US'), $null) 
    If ( $FileDate -ge $Date ) {
        Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Directory.Name + ' ' + $_.Name} -Filter $FileType -Recurse -Force
        Copy-Item -Path (Join-Path -Path $Src -ChildPath '\*' ) -Destination $Dst -Filter $FileType -Recurse -Force
    }
}

Is the space before the word "filter" a typo (Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Directory.Name+' '+$_.Name} - Filter) — Itchydon
– Itchydon, Commented Jun 28, 2017 at 13:58
What is the goal of this code? Why does the user provide a date in the beginning? Are you trying to find files that have a name that match a pattern? — FoxDeploy
– FoxDeploy, Commented Jun 28, 2017 at 13:58
The goal of this code is to copy and rename any file from an entire folder + subfolders to a specific user-selected folder which has a date in its name after the user-specified date. — Bart Zhang
– Bart Zhang, Commented Jun 28, 2017 at 14:02

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

1

I started with a sample folder with files with this naming standard, matching what you described.

Then I ran through your date conversion logic and found that it didn't seem to work as described (lots of errors trying to conver '04082011' to date, for instance) , so I made a change on line 10, changing the line to this:

$DateStr = $_.BaseName.Substring(0,2)+'/'+$_.BaseName.Substring(3,2)+'/'+$_.BaseName.Substring(6,4)

I simply added slashes to the date, so we would end up with '04/08/2011' which seemed to be all I needed for $DateStr to populate, which then allowed the line of file date comparison to work. I also changed the conversion on line 11 to this

$FileDate = get-date $DateStr

Adding some Write-Host lines for visibility and I get this.

03/02/2017 03-02-2017 Test has date of 03/02/2017 00:00:00
03-02-2017 Test has a file date of 03/02/2017 00:00:00 which is newer than 02/04/2014 10:13:14, time to move it
03/22/2010 03-22-2010 Test has date of 03/22/2010 00:00:00
03-22-2010 Test has a file date of 03/22/2010 00:00:00 which is older than 02/04/2014 10:13:14, ignoring...
04/08/2011 04-08-2011 Test has date of 04/08/2011 00:00:00
04-08-2011 Test has a file date of 04/08/2011 00:00:00 which is older than 02/04/2014 10:13:14, ignoring...
05/08/2016 05-08-2016 Test has date of 05/08/2016 00:00:00
05-08-2016 Test has a file date of 05/08/2016 00:00:00 which is newer than 02/04/2014 10:13:14, time to move it

I haven't checked the rest of your code, but this should get you back on track.

Conclusion

Good work for parsing out the file date from a file name like that, which is tricky. However the Conversion technique you were trying was making things harder than it needed to be, so by changing the way we parse the filename (adding slashes so that PowerShell would recognize the string with the much easier Get-Date cmdlet), we could use a different technique which is easier to understand.

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

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answered Jun 28, 2017 at 14:24

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2 Comments

Bart Zhang Over a year ago

So by that logic, that could also apply to the InputDate and Date variables as well?

Bart Zhang Over a year ago

Completed the project. Thank you so much for your help FoxDeploy

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