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.

Answer 1

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. :-)

Answer 2

Simple approach is to use the pipeline more efficiently

$inputFile = "C:\Users\r6540\Desktop\UserFiles.txt"
$outputFile = "C:\temp\output.txt"

Get-Content $inputFile | ForEach-Object{
    $sum = Get-ChildItem $_ -recurse -Force | Measure-Object -property length -sum | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Sum
    "{1}`t{0:N2}" -f ($sum / 1MB), $_
} | Set-Content $outputFile

So we take each line of the file and gather the size in MB using your posted logic. The send the output to file. But we can improve on that a little.

$inputFile = "C:\Users\r6540\Desktop\UserFiles.txt"
$outputFile = "C:\temp\output.txt"

$results = Get-Content $inputFile | ForEach-Object{
    $props = @{
        Folder = $_
        Sum = "{0:N2}" -f ((Get-ChildItem $_ -Recurse -Force | Measure-Object -property length -sum | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Sum) / 1MB)
    }

    New-Object -TypeName PSCustomObject -Property $props
}

$results | Export-CSV $outputFile -NoTypeInformation
"Total,{0}" -f ($results | Measure-Object Sum -sum | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Sum) | Add-Content $outputFile

Only difference here is that we make nice CSV output as well as a total being appended to the bottom since at the end of the day that might be nice to know as well (If I was the recipient of multiple copies from multiple users I would save me a few seconds of effort.) You could just keep a counter in the loop as well for this but this give you an opportunity to see PowerShell at work.