Powershell delete subfolders with a specific name

Question

I'm new to PowerShell and I have been trying create a script but so far, I have been unsuccessful. I want it to do a specific task which is ;

I need to be able to search through a drive for a specific folder called "Cookies" and delete it. The problem only is the folder cookies is set at multiple locations.

Example :

\\\myserver\test\User\Profiles\USER1\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
\\\myserver\test\User\Profiles\USER2\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
\\\myserver\test\User\Profiles\USER3\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
\\\myserver\test\User\Profiles\USER4\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies

and go on...

How do I get powershell to go trough all those different USER folder to search for the Cookies folder and delete it.

I came up with this, but I was hoping a powershell guru could help me.

$cookies= Get-ChildItem \\myserver\test\User\Profiles\*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies

foreach ($cookie in $cookies){
    Remove-Item "$cookies" -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue   
}

Will this work ?

Answer 1

You are almost there. No need to use quotes around $cookies .

If you do a foreach ($cookie in $cookies) , then operate on $cookie in the script block, not $cookies .

This works:

$cookies = Get-ChildItem \\myserver\test\User\Profiles\*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies

foreach ($cookie in $cookies){
    Remove-Item $cookie -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue   
}

but this will work as well, without a loop:

$cookies = Get-ChildItem \\myserver\test\User\Profiles\*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies
Remove-Item $cookies -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

If you want a one-liner and no variables:

Get-ChildItem \\myserver\test\User\Profiles\*\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies | Remove-Item -Force -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Answer 2

Try this one liner -

$path = "\\myserver\test\User\Profiles\"
Get-ChildItem $path -Recurse -Directory | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq 'Cookies'} | % {Remove-Item $_.FullName}

Answer 3

This is a little bit simplified version. Just for the sake of safety I would run it first with -WhatIf to verify if the result is correct. Then just comment the other line

$path = ""
$pattern = ""
Get-ChildItem $path -recurse -directory -include $pattern |
   Remove-Item -WhatIf
   #Remove-Item -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue