Automatic confirmation of deletion in powershell

Question

I'm running the following command:

get-childitem C:\temp\ -exclude *.svn-base,".svn" -recurse | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname}

Which prompts me very frequently like this:

Confirm
The item at C:\temp\f\a\d has children and the Recurse parameter was not specified. If you continue,
all children will be removed with the item. Are you sure you want to continue?
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"): 

How can I have it automatically set to "A"?

Coco

Answer 1

Try using the -Force parameter on Remove-Item.

Lite

please see below answers for a more comprehensive answer to this problem. – Titfer

Answer 2

The default is: no prompt.

You can enable it with -Confirm or disable it with -Confirm:$false

However, it will still prompt, when the target:

• is a directory
• and it is not empty
• and the -Recurse parameter is not specified.

-Force is required to also remove hidden and read-only items etc.

To sum it up:

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -Confirm:$false

...should cover all scenarios.

Patrizius

So if you want it to delete but not delete, and just raise an error when it's a directory you also have to test for it being a directory separately. – Laughton

@WarrenP What behavior exactly are you looking for? If you tell PowerShell to delete a directory, it will delete it. Unless it's not empty, then the behavior will be as described. – Patrizius

Answer 3

Add -confirm:$false to suppress confirmation.

Conti

This WILL NOT work. -Confirm is for forcing confirmation. Having it off just runs the normal decision logic. – Spikelet

do you use -force -confirm:$false ? – Escape

Answer 4

Add -recurse after the remove-item, also the -force parameter helps remove hidden files e.g.:

gci C:\temp\ -exclude *.svn-base,".svn" -recurse | %{ri $_ -force -recurse}

Linctus

-recurse prevents confirmation for removing non empty folders. Thanks. – Edmondo

Answer 5

Remove-Item .\foldertodelete -Force -Recurse

Flaw

Answer 6

Just an additional tip: Let's say the PS1 (helloworld.ps1) has a code like below:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Confirm:$false -Force
Write-Host "Hello, World!"

And if we expect that each time the code runs, it would automatically run the Set-ExecutionPolicy without prompting the user & run the code silently...

It won't work that way!! I'm still figuring out how to run a PS code without prompting the user & will post the solution if I find out

Shipping

Answer 7

You just need to add a /A behind the line.

Example:

get-childitem C:\temp\ -exclude *.svn-base,".svn" -recurse | foreach ($_) {remove-item $_.fullname} /a

Baerman