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Determine if a folder exists

Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/powershell-community/determine-if-a-folder-exists/

Q: Is there any way to determine whether or not a specific folder exists on a computer? A: There are loads of ways you can do this.

The Test-Path Cmdlet

The easiest way to do this is to use the Test-Path cmdlet. It looks for a given path and returns True if it exists, otherwise it returns False. You could evaluate the result of the Test-Path like in the code snippet below

$Folder = 'C:\Windows'
"Test to see if folder [$Folder]  exists"
if (Test-Path -Path $Folder) {
    "Path exists!"
} else {
    "Path doesn't exist."
}

This is similar to the -d $filepath operator for IF statements in Bash. True is returned if $filepath exists, otherwise False is returned.

For More Information

And for more information on Test-Path see the Test-Path help page.

Summary

So as you saw, Test-Path tests the existence of a path and returns a boolean value. This return value can be evaluated in a IF statement for example.

Tip of the Hat

This article is based on an earlier Scripting Guys blog article at How can I determine if a folder exists on a computer?. I am not sure who wrote the original article.

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