Powershell - Search Subfolders and delete smallest fles in each-CodePudding

I'm not sure if this would be considered a strange request, but I'm stuck on a script to search subfolders, and delete the smallest file from inside the folder.
I'm working with a folder structure along the lines of:

TopFolder
└─── folder1
│   │   file1.txt - 42kb
│   │   file2.txt - 84kb
|   |
└─── folder2
    │   file1.txt - 83kb
    │   file2.txt - 34kb
...

I'm looking to find a way to recursively go through all the subfolders under the "TopFolder", find the smallest file in each of the folders, delete it, then continue to next folder.

I tried something along the lines of the following, but it's giving me "item doesn't exist" errors

Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Directory -Path 'Z:\TopFolder' |
ForEach-Object{
    Get-ChildItem -File -Path $_ |
        Where-Object { $_.Name -ne $(Split-Path -Path $PSCommandPath -Leaf) } |
            Sort-Object -Property Length |
                Select-Object -First 1 |
                Remove-Item -WhatIf
    }

CodePudding user response：

Change: Get-ChildItem -File -Path $_ to $_ | Get-ChildItem -File – Mathias R. Jessen

Worked, perfect, thank you.

CodePudding user response：

An alternative to what you're trying to accomplish, in case you need to enumerate many files and directories this should be faster:

using namespace System.IO

$topFolder = 'Z:\TopFolder'
$enum = [EnumerationOptions]::new()
$enum.RecurseSubdirectories = $true
$directories = [Directory]::GetDirectories($topFolder, '*', $enum)

foreach($dir in $directories)
{
    $todelete = [FileInfo[]][Directory]::GetFiles(
        $dir, '*', $enum
    ) | Sort-Object Length | Select-Object -First 1

    if($todelete)
    {
        Remove-Item $todelete -WhatIf
    }
}

Note, above assumes you're not looking to find hidden or system files / folders. If you actually want to search for them you would need to use this instead:

$enum.AttributesToSkip = 0