What is the correct syntax to exclude a folder's contents but not the folder itself

Question

I have a powershell script that copies files from $source to $dest and it excludes some files types. It excludes my csv files and web.config files fine, but it won't exclude the Log folder contents. This is my script, what is the correct syntax to exclude the files contents but not the Log folder itself?

$exclude = @('Thumbs.db','*-Log.csv','web.config','Logs/*')

Get-ChildItem $source -Recurse -Exclude $exclude | Copy-Item -Destination {Join-Path $dest $_.FullName.Substring($source.length)}

Answer 1

You'll need to setup a second Array with the paths you want to avoid and then add a filter in the pipe. Here's some sample code:

$exclude = @('Thumbs.db','*-Log.csv','web.config','Logs/*')
$directory = @("C:\logs")
Get-ChildItem $source -Recurse -Exclude $exclude | where {$directory -notcontains $_.DirectoryName}

Answer 2

You could make your own recursive copy function.

function Copy-WithFilter ($sourcePath, $destPath)
{
    $exclude = @('Thumbs.db', '*-Log.csv','web.config', 'Logs')

    # Call this function again, using the child folders of the current source folder.
    Get-ChildItem $sourcePath -Exclude $exclude | Where-Object { $_.Length -eq $null } | % { Copy-WithFilter $_.FullName (Join-Path -Path $destPath -ChildPath $_.Name) } 

    # Create the destination directory, if it does not already exist.
    if (!(Test-Path $destPath)) { New-Item -Path $destPath -ItemType Directory | Out-Null }

    # Copy the child files from source to destination.
    Get-ChildItem $sourcePath -Exclude $exclude | Where-Object { $_.Length -ne $null } | Copy-Item -Destination $destPath

}

# $source and $dest defined elsewhere.
Copy-WithFilter $source $dest