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"?

marsze · Answer 1 · 2019-07-24T10:27:13.177

70

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.

edited Jul 24 '19 at 10:27

answered Feb 13 '14 at 14:21

marsze

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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. – Warren P May 15 '23 at 18:39
@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. – marsze May 16 '23 at 20:34

score 35 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 21 '11 at 00:16

35

Add -confirm:$false to suppress confirmation.

answered Jan 21 '11 at 00:16

mjolinor

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This WILL NOT work. -Confirm is for forcing confirmation. Having it off just runs the normal decision logic. – JasonMArcher Jan 22 '11 at 00:22
1

do you use -force -confirm:$false ? – Kiquenet May 23 '13 at 10:37

score 29 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 21 '11 at 00:03

29

Try using the -Force parameter on Remove-Item.

answered Jan 21 '11 at 00:03

Keith Hill

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please see below answers for a more comprehensive answer to this problem. – Shayan Zafar Apr 29 '21 at 17:23

score 11 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 14 '12 at 07:04

11

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}

answered Jun 14 '12 at 07:04

Tamas Szabo

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`-recurse` prevents confirmation for removing non empty folders. Thanks. – Jürgen Steinblock Sep 19 '17 at 05:47

score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 11 '16 at 16:07

7

Remove-Item .\foldertodelete -Force -Recurse

answered Jul 11 '16 at 16:07

Alberto Perez

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 29 '22 at 04:26

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

score 0 · Answer 7 · edited Jul 15 '15 at 03:17

0

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

edited Jul 15 '15 at 03:17

Biswajit_86

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answered Jul 15 '15 at 03:01

Gerald Liew

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Automatic confirmation of deletion in powershell

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