Getting Files and Folders Recursively in PowerShell Without Using -Recurse

This is a PowerShell script which will traverse a directory structure listing all files and folders, without using the built-in -Recurse switch.

PowerShell has a built-in switch for this using Get-ChildItem C:\temp -Recurse. However, this script shows how to do it using a recursive function instead — useful for understanding the logic and applying it to other languages that may not have a recurse switch.

The script works by getting the child files and folders, then if it finds a folder it calls itself.

$path = "C:\Temp"

function get-folders {
    Param ($path)
    $items = Get-ChildItem $path
    foreach ($item in $items) {
        # List all the folders
        if ($item.Mode -eq "d-----") {
            Write-Host $path\$item -ForegroundColor Blue
            $itemname = $item.Name
            $fullpath = "$path\$itemname"
            $array += $fullpath
            get-folders $fullpath  # Recursively list if it is a directory
        }
        # Print out any files
        if ($item.Mode -eq "-a----") {
            Write-Host $path\$item -ForegroundColor Yellow
            $itemname = $item.Name
            $fullpath = "$path\$itemname"
            $array += $fullpath
        }
    }
    # Return the array with all subfolders
    return $array
}

$subfolders = get-folders $path

The script outputs folders in blue and files in yellow, making it easy to distinguish between them at a glance.