Counting Files Efficiently (Part 2)

In the previous tip we looked at how to efficiently count items like files in a folder. Here are some more examples.

Counting the number of files in a given folder is trivial in PowerShell:

$count = Get-ChildItem -Path "$home\Desktop" -Force |
  Measure-Object |
  Select-Object -ExpandProperty Count

"Number of files: $Count"

Simply adjust Get-ChildItem to find out even more. Add -Recurse, for example, to include files in subfolders:

$count = Get-ChildItem -Path "$home\Desktop" -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue  |
  Measure-Object |
  Select-Object -ExpandProperty Count

"Number of files: $Count"

Or, focus on certain files only. This example counts log and txt files in the Windows folder up to a recursion depth of 2:

$count = Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir -Force -Recurse -Include *.log, *.txt -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Depth 2 |
  Measure-Object |
  Select-Object -ExpandProperty Count

"Number of files: $Count"

(Note: the -Depth parameter was introduced in PowerShell 5)

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