Using a text file as input to a Powershell script

Question

My group is moving to a new network where we can't directly copy from our computer in Network A to the new machine in Network B. After years on this machine in Network A, I've got project files interspersed all over the disk. I need to build a script to copy the folders and files to a backup disk. No problem there, but the network tech guy requires the total byte count to be known before copying.

In CMD I've used dir /AD /S /B > C:\Users\r6540\Desktop\UserFiles.txt from C:\ to generate a huge list of directories, including a lot of junk that I've manually edited out.

e.g.

C:\Dev\SSIS
C:\Dev\SSIS\DatabaseCleanup
C:\Dev\SSIS\DatabaseMaintTests
C:\Dev\SSIS\EclipseKeys
C:\Dev\SSIS\TemplateProject

I've never used PowerShell, but it certainly looks like this task would be within its ability. I found this:

$startFolder = "C:\Scripts"

$colItems = (Get-ChildItem $startFolder | Measure-Object -property length -sum)
"$startFolder -- " + "{0:N2}" -f ($colItems.sum / 1MB) + " MB"

$colItems = (Get-ChildItem $startFolder -recurse | Where-Object {$_.PSIsContainer -eq $True} | Sort-Object)
foreach ($i in $colItems)
    {
        $subFolderItems = (Get-ChildItem $i.FullName | Measure-Object -property length -sum)
        $i.FullName + " -- " + "{0:N2}" -f ($subFolderItems.sum / 1MB) + " MB"
    }

at Microsoft technet and also this, same page:

$objFSO = New-Object -com  Scripting.FileSystemObject
"{0:N2}" -f (($objFSO.GetFolder("C:\Scripts").Size) / 1MB) + " MB"

The output I'm looking for is the directory name, a tab, and the folder size (without the "MB" as shown above though) and CRLF as the EOL written to a text file.

e.g.

C:\Dev\SSIS 70.23
C:\Dev\SSIS\DatabaseCleanup 17.80
C:\Dev\SSIS\DatabaseMaintTests  22.91
C:\Dev\SSIS\EclipseKeys 1.22
C:\Dev\SSIS\TemplateProject 13.29

Anyone know PowerShell well enough to troop through UserFiles.txt and get the resulting text file output?

Form doesn't matter as much as function--so if you can come up with an alternate approach, I'd be glad to see it.

Thanks.

Solution

This is pretty straightforward in PowerShell:

$objFSO = New-Object -com  Scripting.FileSystemObject
Get-Content c:\input.txt |
    Foreach { "{0}`t{1:N2}" -f $_, (($objFSO.GetFolder($_).Size) / 1MB) } |
    Out-File c:\output.txt -enc ascii

This is assuming the FileSystemObject script you found works. :-)

Comments

[Keith Hill]

To get the true size using Get-ChildItem, use -Force to get it to list hidden files.

[Matt]

@KeithHill This is true.

[Jim the Frayed]

This works fine, except the separator is a space instead of a tab. Apparently the tabs washed out when I pasted the input file text. The output file becomes an input file for the database upload process, and the space causes an error. Know of a way we can stuff a tab character there?

[Jim the Frayed]

The first script gets close, but the separator is " -- ", and I need a tab there, because the output file here becomes the input file for another process. Thanks for the total/CSV version too--very illustrative.

[Matt]

@JimtheFrayed replaced with tab

[Keith Hill]

You can stuff in a tab char using <backtick>t inside a double quoted string. See the updated answer.

[Jim the Frayed]

Perfecto! This generates the exact file format needed. Thanks, Kevin!