Goal

Exclude all sub-directories when running a PowerShell script that matches a filename regex pattern

Directory structure

/

- 2018-11-19.md



18-2/

- 2018-10-16.md

- 2019-01-14.md

- 2019-10-10.md



18-3/

- 2019-01-13.md

- 2019-04-25.md

PowerShell script

$file = '2018-11-19.md'



Get-ChildItem -recurse | where-object { $_.FullName -match '[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}.md' } | 

    ForEach-Object {$fullname = $_.fullname; (Get-Content $_.fullname | foreach-object {

        $_ -replace "apple", "orange"

    }) | Set-Content $fullname}



(Get-Content $file | ForEach-Object {

        $_ -replace '<p(.*?)>(.*?)</p>', '$2'

    }) | Set-Content -Encoding Utf8 $file



Get-ChildItem -recurse | where-object { $_.FullName -match '[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}.md' } | 

    foreach-Object {$fullname2 = $_.fullname; (Get-Content $_.fullname | 

         pandoc -f markdown -t markdown -o $fullname2 $fullname2

    )}

Details

• The goal is to run the PowerShell script on only file(s) in the root directory. These file(s) at root will change but always be named according to the convention shown. The regex in the PowerShell script successfully matches this filename.


• Currently the script changes all files in the directory example above.


• Any examples I can find show how to exclude specific directories by identifying their names in the script (e.g., -Exclude folder-name). I want to exclude all sub-directories without naming them specifically because...


• ...In the future sub-directories may be added for 18-4, 19-5, etc., so it seems like an exclusion based on a regex would make sense.

Attempts

To limit the script's scope to the root directory, I tried variations on -notmatch with , *, *.*, \*, etc., without success.

To exclude sub-directories, I tried variations on -Exclude with the same paths but did not succeed.

My PowerShell knowledge is not advanced enough to get further than this. I would be grateful for any help or to be pointed in the right direction. Thank you for any help.

As pointed out by Owain and gvee in the comments, when using the -Recurse switch, you tell the Get-ChildItem cmdlet that you wish to traverse through the sub directory structure from the selected location. As expained on the docs site of the cmdlet

Gets the items in the specified locations and in all child items of the locations.

So simply removing the switch should make the code do as you want.
If you ever want only X level of sub directories you can use -Depth switch.

Get-ChildItem | where-object { $_.FullName -match '[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}.md' } | 

    ForEach-Object {$fullname = $_.fullname; (Get-Content $_.fullname | foreach-object {

        $_ -replace "apple", "orange"

    }) | Set-Content $fullname}



(Get-Content $file | ForEach-Object {

        $_ -replace '<p(.*?)>(.*?)</p>', '$2'

    }) | Set-Content -Encoding Utf8 $file



Get-ChildItem | where-object { $_.FullName -match '[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}.md' } | 

    foreach-Object {$fullname2 = $_.fullname; (Get-Content $_.fullname | 

         pandoc -f markdown -t markdown -o $fullname2 $fullname2

    )}