PowerShell 3.0 and newer
When you use Get-ChildItem to list folder content, you can add the –Recurse parameter to dive into all subfolders. However, this won’t let you control the nesting depth. Get-ChildItem will now search in all subfolders, no matter how deeply they are nested.
Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir -Filter *.log -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Sometimes, you see solutions like this one, in an effort to limit the nesting depth:
Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir\*\*\* -Filter *.log -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
However, this would not limit nesting depth to three levels. Instead, it would search in all folders three level deeper. It would not, for example, search any folder in level 1 and 2.
The only way to limit nesting depth would be to implement recursion yourself:
function Get-MyChildItem { param ( [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)] $Path, $Filter = '*', [System.Int32] $MaxDepth = 3, [System.Int32] $Depth = 0 ) $Depth++ Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Filter $Filter -File if ($Depth -le $MaxDepth) { Get-ChildItem -Path $Path -Directory | ForEach-Object { Get-MyChildItem -Path $_.FullName -Filter $Filter -Depth $Depth -MaxDepth $MaxDepth} } } Get-MyChildItem -Path c:\windows -Filter *.log -MaxDepth 2 -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName
This call would get you all *.log files from your Windows folder up to two levels deep.
