Navigating and Managing Files

PowerShell's file cmdlets work the same on every operating system, and the familiar aliases (cd, ls, mkdir, cp, mv, rm) are available too.

Creating files and folders

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path 'reports', 'archive/2025' -Force | Out-Null
New-Item -ItemType File -Path 'notes.txt' | Out-Null
Set-Content -Path 'reports/jan.csv' -Value 'region,total'
Get-ChildItem -Name | Sort-Object

archive
notes.txt
reports

• New-Item -ItemType Directory creates folders; -Force creates missing parents and doesn't fail if they exist.
• Set-Content writes text to a file (the Files lesson in Level 2 covers reading and writing in depth).
• Get-ChildItem -Name lists just the names. (| Out-Null hides the objects New-Item would otherwise print.)

Copying, moving, renaming, and deleting

Set-Content report.txt 'draft'
Copy-Item report.txt report-backup.txt
Rename-Item report.txt final-report.txt
New-Item -ItemType Directory docs | Out-Null
Move-Item final-report.txt docs/
Remove-Item report-backup.txt
Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Name | Sort-Object

docs
docs\final-report.txt

Remove-Item -Recurse deletes a folder and its contents. Deleted items don't go to the Recycle Bin.

-WhatIf and -Confirm

Cmdlets that change things support -WhatIf — describe what would happen, without doing it:

'a.log', 'b.log', 'keep.txt' | ForEach-Object { New-Item $_ | Out-Null }
Remove-Item *.log -WhatIf
Get-ChildItem -Name | Sort-Object

What if: Performing the operation "Remove File" on target "C:\demo\a.log".
What if: Performing the operation "Remove File" on target "C:\demo\b.log".
a.log
b.log
keep.txt

Nothing was deleted. Use -WhatIf before any bulk change, and -Confirm to be asked about each item.

Finding files

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path src/utils -Force | Out-Null
'src/app.ps1', 'src/utils/math.ps1', 'src/readme.md' | ForEach-Object { New-Item $_ | Out-Null }

Get-ChildItem -Path src -Recurse -Filter *.ps1 | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name
(Get-ChildItem -Path src -Recurse -File).Count
Test-Path src/readme.md
Test-Path src/missing.md

app.ps1
math.ps1
3
True
False

Test-Path returns True or False — perfect in conditions.

Paths

Join-Path builds paths with the right separator for the operating system, and Split-Path takes them apart:

Join-Path 'reports' '2025' 'april.csv'
Split-Path 'reports/2025/april.csv' -Leaf
[System.IO.Path]::GetExtension('april.csv')

reports\2025\april.csv
april.csv
.csv

(The output uses \ on Windows and / on Linux and macOS. PowerShell accepts either when you type paths.)