User PowerShell to Delete Contents of Folder, but Ignore Files Currently in Use-CodePudding

Long story short, I have a customer who is trying to figure out why logs are filling up their server. That's not really something I need to worry about, other than I need to continually go through and clear out logs from a ton of servers so my application can run. I'm trying to figure out a script that will clear out the log folder. Ideally, this should work:

Get-ChildItem -Path $filePath -Include *.* -Recurse | foreach { $_.Delete()}

but some of the files are still in use, so I'm getting this:

Exception calling "Delete" with "0" argument(s): "The process cannot access the file 
'filename' because it is being used by another process."
At line:1 char:87
  ... $filePath -Include *.* -Recurse | foreach { $_.Delete()}
                                                            
      CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
      FullyQualifiedErrorId : IOException

Is there something I can add to this to ignore files that are still in use?

CodePudding user response：

If you're not interested in keeping log of what files where deleted and which files were in use you can simply pipe Get-ChildItem to Remove-Item and use -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue (-EA 0 for short) to suppress the error messages.

Note the use of -File is easier and more efficient than -Include *.*. You can also add -Force for Remove-Item:

Forces the cmdlet to remove items that cannot otherwise be changed, such as hidden or read-only files or read-only aliases or variables.

Get-ChildItem -Path $filepath -File -Recurse -EA 0 | Remove-Item -Confirm:$false -EA 0