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 · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-24 10:27:13Z

71

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, 2019 at 10:27

answered Feb 13, 2014 at 14:21

marsze

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2 Comments

Warren P Over a year ago

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.

marsze Over a year ago

@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.

mjolinor · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-21 00:16:58Z

35

Add -confirm:$false to suppress confirmation.

answered Jan 21, 2011 at 0:16

mjolinor

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2 Comments

JasonMArcher Over a year ago

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

Kiquenet Over a year ago

do you use -force -confirm:$false ?

Keith Hill · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-21 00:03:00Z

29

Try using the -Force parameter on Remove-Item.

answered Jan 21, 2011 at 0:03

Keith Hill

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1 Comment

Shayan Zafar Over a year ago

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

Tamas Szabo · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-14 07:04:37Z

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, 2012 at 7:04

Tamas Szabo

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1 Comment

Jürgen Steinblock Over a year ago

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

Alberto Perez · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-11 16:07:02Z

7

Remove-Item .\foldertodelete -Force -Recurse

answered Jul 11, 2016 at 16:07

Alberto Perez

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Comments

Aargee · Accepted Answer · 2022-06-29 04:26:23Z

1

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

answered Jun 29, 2022 at 4:26

Aargee

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Comments

Biswajit_86 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-15 03:17:53Z

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, 2015 at 3:17

Biswajit_86

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answered Jul 15, 2015 at 3:01

Gerald Liew

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