Powershell删除项％1（上下文菜单）

Question

Been fighting with Powershell to do what I need it to do. It might be a simple solution but I've not found it. If this question is a duplicate, I do apologize, but I couldn't find the answer I was looking for.

TL;DR at the bottom.

So, to the issue I have. I'm trying to add a PS script to context menu via regedit that deletes a folder + files within, it works great on folders without any spaces in it but when I try to delete a folder with spaces (like "New Folder") it throws an error and closes. (Tried looking for a pause / sleep command with Remove-Item but no luck, except for long scripts with error handling etc.)

I suspect the error is similar to

Remove-Item : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'Folder'.

At line:1 char:12 + Remove-item <<<< New Folder + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Remove-Item], ParameterBindingException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand

And the code I'm currently using is

cmd /c  PowerShell Remove-Item "%1" -recurse -force

I've tried different variations for it to work without luck. IE replacing "%1" with "pathAsString", added another "% 1" , added wildcard "* *" , removed the flags. Some different variations on the code I've tried:

cmd /c PowerShell Remove-Item \"%1\" -recurse -force
cmd /c PowerShell Remove-Item & "{"%1" -recurse -force"}"

TL;DR cmd /c PowerShell Remove-Item "%1" -recurse -force ignores folders with white spaces, tried various things. Usage in Context Menu (via Regedit).

Might be a solution that's obvious but I don't see it.

Answer 1

The following worked for me:

cmd /c PowerShell -command "& {Remove-Item -path '%1' -recurse -force -confirm:$false}"

When using cmd.exe, there is no such thing as a script block. This means the value passed to -command will always be a string. I added the single quotes ('') around %1 to keep your double quotes ("") with your argument. Apparently, this method will fail if you have a single quote (') in your file path. Also the call operator & is not required even though the online documentation says it is.

See PowerShell.exe Command-Line Help for more information on how to use PowerShell.exe .

See About Quoting Rules for more information on how PowerShell single and double quotation marks work.

Answer 2

One of your attempts:

cmd /c PowerShell Remove-Item \\"%1\\" -recurse -force

actually does work, albeit only if those paths that have embedded spaces don't contain multiple adjacent spaces (see the bottom section for why your first attempt with "%1" instead of \\"%1\\" didn't work).

To make the command robust (and also more efficient), use the following variation, which does not involve cmd.exe (because it isn't necessary), and the command to pass to PowerShell is enclosed in "..." as a whole with embedded " escaped as \\" (as in your attempt):

powershell.exe -noprofile -command "Remove-Item -LiteralPath \"%1\" -Recurse -Force"

PowerShell CLI options used:

• -noprofile suppresses loading of the current user's profile ( $PROFILE ), which would only unnecessarily slow down the command (or, worse, could change its behavior).

• -command tells PowerShell that the remaining arguments are a PowerShell command (a piece of source code, as distinct from -file , which is used to invoke a script )

  • While you don't strictly need to specify -command in Windows PowerShell, because it is implied , that is no longer the case in PowerShell Core , which defaults to -file .

The Remove-Item command passed to PowerShell:

• Enclosing the entire PowerShell command in "..." ensures that whitespace inside the command is preserved as-is , which matters with paths that happen to contain runs of multiple spaces, eg "c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices<space><space>2018"

• \\" is how PowerShell requires nested (embedded) " chars. with to be escaped when called from the command line with -command - see below for an explanation.

• -LiteralPath ensures that Remove-Item interprets the path literally rather than as a wildcard pattern (as would happen by default, with the implied -Path parameter); while not very likely, paths such as c:\\tmp\\folder[] would break the command if taken as a wildcard.

Caveats :

• Due to (ultimately) using double quotes ( "..." ) to enclose the path (the directory path that File Explorer expands %1 to), it becomes an expandable string , ie, it is subject to string interpolation , which means that folder paths that contain $ characters (eg, c:\\tmp\\$foo ) could be misinterpreted.

• You can suppress this interpolation by replacing \\"%1\\" with '%1' , ie, by using a single-quoted string (which PowerShell always treats literally), but the problem is that you then won't be able to use the command on folders whose paths happen to have ' chars. in them (eg, c:\\tmp\\o'reilly )

---

Why just "%1" isn't enough:

cmd /c PowerShell Remove-Item "%1" -recurse -force , your (first) command line (which you're using as a command definition for File Explorer's context menus ), is processed as follows:

• File Explorer replaces %1 with the absolute path of the file for folder that was right-clicked, as-is - whether or not the path has embedded spaces; eg:

  • c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices 2018 .

• The resulting command line is then executed; eg:

  • cmd /c PowerShell Remove-Item "c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices 2018" -recurse -force

• cmd /c is incidental here (and not needed): It essentially just relays the command line to PowerShell (via its executable, powershell.exe ); eg:

  • powershell.exe Remove-Item "c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices 2018" -recurse -force

• PowerShell first processes the individual arguments - Remove-Item , "c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices 2018" , -recurse , -force by removing enclosing double quotes .

• Since the -command option is implied, the quote-stripped arguments are re-joined with a space as the separator and then interpreted as a snippet of PowerShell source code ; eg:

  • Remove-Item c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices 2018 -recurse -force

  • As you can see, the removal of the double quotes resulted in a broken PowerShell command, because the path with spaces now lacks quoting so that c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices 2018 is no longer recognized as a single argument and is instead interpreted as 2 arguments, prefix c:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices followed by 2018 as its own, syntactically extraneous argument.

  • While using \\"%1\\" instead of "%1" alone would prevent the up-front quote stripping - by telling PowerShell that the " chars. are to be retained during initial argument parsing - additionally enclosing the entire PowerShell command in "..." is necessary to correctly preserve file paths with multiple adjacent spaces (even though such paths may be the result of a typo during folder creation):

    • Without overall enclosing "..." , a \\" -quoted path such as C:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices<space><space>2018 would result in the following 2 arguments:

      • \\"C:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices
      • 2018\\"
      • When PowerShell later re-joins the individual arguments with a single space between them (after having recognized \\" as an escaped " to be retained ), before interpreting the resulting string as PowerShell code, it sees "C:\\Users\\jdoe\\Invoices<space>2018" , ie, only a single space.

    • With overall enclosing "..." , the entire PowerShell command is parsed as a single argument, with interior whitespace preserved as-is , which avoids the problem.