Get-Item

The Get-Item cmdlet gets the item at the specified location. It doesn't get the contents of the item at the location unless you use a wildcard character (*) to request all the contents of the item.

This cmdlet is used by PowerShell providers to navigate through different types of data stores.

This example gets the current directory. The dot ('.') represents the item at the current location (not its contents).

Get-Item .

Directory: C:\

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
----                -------------     ------ ----
d----         7/26/2006  10:01 AM            ps-test

This example gets all the items in the current directory. The wildcard character (*) represents all the contents of the current item.

Get-Item *

Directory: C:\ps-test

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
----                -------------     ------ ----
d----         7/26/2006   9:29 AM            Logs
d----         7/26/2006   9:26 AM            Recs
-a---         7/26/2006   9:28 AM         80 date.csv
-a---         7/26/2006  10:01 AM         30 filenoext
-a---         7/26/2006   9:30 AM      11472 process.doc
-a---         7/14/2006  10:47 AM         30 test.txt

This example gets the current directory of the C: drive. The object that is retrieved represents only the directory, not its contents.

Get-Item C:

This example gets the items in the C: drive. The wildcard character (*) represents all the items in the container, not just the container.

Get-Item C:\*

In PowerShell, use a single asterisk (*) to get contents, instead of the traditional *.*. The format is interpreted literally, so *.* wouldn't retrieve directories or filenames without a dot.

This example gets the LastAccessTime property of the C:\Windows directory. LastAccessTime is just one property of file system directories. To see all the properties of a directory, type (Get-Item <directory-name>) | Get-Member.

(Get-Item C:\Windows).LastAccessTime

This example shows the contents of the Microsoft.PowerShell registry key. You can use this cmdlet with the PowerShell Registry provider to get registry keys and subkeys, but you must use the Get-ItemProperty cmdlet to get the registry values and data.

Get-Item HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\Shellids\Microsoft.PowerShell\

This example gets items in the Windows directory with names that include a dot (.), but don't begin with w*.This example works only when the path includes a wildcard character (*) to specify the contents of the item.

Get-Item C:\Windows\*.* -Exclude "w*"

In PowerShell 6.2, an alternate view was added to get hardlink information. To get the hardlink information, pipe the output to Format-Table -View childrenWithHardlink

Get-Item C:\Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe |
    Format-Table -View childrenWithHardLink

Directory: C:\Windows\System32

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
la---           5/12/2021  7:40 AM       10848576 ntoskrnl.exe

The Mode property identifies the hardlink by the l in la---

In PowerShell 7.1 on Unix systems, the Get-Item cmdlet provides Unix-like output:

PS> Get-Item /Users

Directory: /

UnixMode    User  Group   LastWriteTime      Size  Name
--------    ----  -----   -------------      ----  ----
drwxr-xr-x  root  admin   12/20/2019 11:46   192   Users

The new properties that are now part of the output are:

• UnixMode is the file permissions as represented on a Unix system
• User is the file owner
• Group is the group owner
• Size is the size of the file or directory as represented on a Unix system