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GenXdev.FileSystem

Overview

GenXdev.FileSystem provides advanced file and directory management beyond what the built-in PowerShell providers offer. It handles long paths (>260 chars), multi-threaded search with a custom pattern parser, robust copy via RoboCopy, atomic file writes, duplicate detection, and project-wide text replacement.

Features

  • Simple but agile utility for renaming text throughout a project directory, including file- and directory- names: Rename-InProject -> rip

  • Pretty good wrapper for robocopy, Microsoft's robust file copy utility: Start-RoboCopy -> rc, xc

    • Folder synchronization
    • Support for extra long pathnames > 256 characters
    • Restartable mode backups
    • Support for copying and fixing security settings
    • Advanced file attribute features
    • Advanced symbolic link and junction support
    • Monitor mode (restart copying after change threshold)
    • Optimization features for LargeFiles, multithreaded copying and network compression
    • Recovery mode (copy from failing disks)

  • Find files with Find-Item -> l

    • Fast multi-threaded search: utilizes parallel and asynchronous IO processing with configurable maximum degree of parallelism (default based on CPU cores) for efficient file and directory scanning.
    • Advanced Pattern Matching: Supports wildcards (*, ?), recursive patterns like **, and complex path structures for precise file and directory queries. **/filename will only recurse until filename is matched. multiple of these patterns are allowed, as long as the are preceeded with a filename or directoryname to match. This pattern parser has the power of Resolve-Path but has recursion features, and does only support * and ? as wildcards, preventing bugs with paths with [ ] brackets in them, eliminating the need for -LiteralPath parameter, while maintaining integrity for paths sections without wildcards, unlike a wildcard match on the whole full path.
    • Enhanced Content Searching: Comprehensive Select-String integration with regular expression patterns within file contents using the -Content parameter.
      • Large File Optimization: Handles extremely large files with smart overlapping buffers and minimal heap allocation
      • Multiple Match Options: Find all matches per line (-AllMatches) or just the first match per file (-List)
      • Case Sensitivity Control: Case-sensitive matching (-CaseSensitive) with culture-specific options (-Culture)
      • Context Capture: Show lines before and after matches (-Context) for better understanding
      • Inverse Matching: Find files that don't contain the pattern (-NotMatch)
      • Output Formats: Raw string output (-Raw), quiet boolean response (-Quiet), or full MatchInfo objects
      • Pattern Types: Regular expressions (default) or simple literal string matching (-SimpleMatch)
      • Encoding Support: Specify file encoding (-Encoding) for accurate text processing
    • Path Type Flexibility: Handles relative, absolute, UNC, rooted paths, and NTFS alternate data streams (ADS) with optional content search in streams.
    • Multi-Drive Support: Searches across all drives with -AllDrives or specific drives via -SearchDrives, including optical disks if specified.
    • Directory and File Filtering: Options to search directories only (-Directory), both files and directories (-FilesAndDirectories), or files with content matching.
    • Exclusion and Limits: Exclude patterns with -Exclude, set max recursion depth -MaxRecursionDepth), file size limits (-MaxFileSize, -MinFileSize), and modified date filters (-ModifiedAfter, -ModifiedBefore).
    • Output Customization: Supports PassThru for FileInfo/DirectoryInfo objects, relative paths, hyperlinks in attended mode, or plain paths in unattended mode (use -NoLinks in case of mishaps to enforce unattended mode).
    • Performance Optimizations: Skips non-text files by default for content search (override with -IncludeNonTextFileMatching), handles long paths (>260 chars), and follows symlinks/junctions.
    • Safety Features: Timeout support (-TimeoutSeconds), ignores inaccessible items, skips system attributes by default, and prevents infinite loops with visited node tracking.

  • Easily change directories with Set-FoundLocation -> lcd

    • Find directories by name/wildcard
    • Supports most of Find-Items parameters, like searching in file contents to match the directory to change location too
    • Has autocompletion, just type the first letters and press Tab or CTRL-SPACE

  • Delete complete directory contents with Remove-AllItems -> sdel

    • Optionally delete the root folder as well

  • Move files and directories with Move-ItemWithTracking

What It Offers

Command Aliases What it does
Find-Item l Fast multi-threaded file/directory search with content matching
Start-RoboCopy rc, xc Robust file copy with sync, restartable mode, long path support
Set-FoundLocation lcd Find a directory by name and jump to it (with tab-completion)
Rename-InProject rip Tex replacement across all files and file/directory names in a project (skips .git etc)
Remove-AllItems sdel Recursively delete directory contents
Find-DuplicateFiles fdf Find duplicate files across directories by hash or criteria
Expand-Path ep Resolve any file reference to a full path
Copy-FilesToDateFolder — Copy files into date-based subfolder structures
Write-FileAtomic — Write bytes to a file atomically to prevent corruption

How It All Comes Together

Find-Item (l) searches for files and directories with a custom pattern parser. Its pattern syntax supports wildcards and recursive patterns like ** without the [bracket] issues of Resolve-Path. It can also search file contents via Select-String integration.

Set-FoundLocation (lcd) finds a directory by name or wildcard and changes the current location to it, with tab-completion. Related location cmdlets (.., ..., through ......) navigate up one to five directory levels.

Start-RoboCopy (rc, xc) wraps Microsoft's RoboCopy with support for sync mode, restartable copies, long paths, and multi-threaded transfers.

Copy-FilesToDateFolder and Move-FilesToDateFolder sort files into date-based subfolder structures.

Write-FileAtomic, Write-JsonFileAtomic, and Write-TextFileAtomic write files by creating a temp file and renaming it into place, preventing corruption if the write is interrupted.

Rename-InProject (rip) replaces text across filenames, directory names, and file contents in a single pass.

Remove-AllItems (sdel) recursively deletes directory contents.

Find-DuplicateFiles (fdf) finds duplicate files by hash or other criteria.

Expand-Path (ep) resolves any file reference to a full path.

See Also