Exclude directories in PowerShell

You can use the PSIsContainer property:

gci | ? { !$_.PSIsContainer }

Your approach would work as well, but would have to look like this:

gci | ? { !($_.Attributes -band [IO.FileAttributes]::Directory) }

as the attributes are an enum and a bitmask.

Or, for your other approach:

gci | ? { "$($_.Attributes)" -notmatch "Directory" }

This will cause the attributes to be converted to a string (which may look like "Directory, ReparsePoint"), and on a string you can use the -notmatch operator.

PowerShell v3 finally has a -Directory parameter on Get-ChildItem:

Get-ChildItem -Directory
gci -ad

You can also filter out directories by looking at their type directly:

ls | ?{$_.GetType() -ne [System.IO.DirectoryInfo]}

Directories are returned by get-childitem (or ls or dir) of type System.IO.DirectoryInfo, and files are of type System.IO.FileInfo. When using the types as literals in Powershell you need to put them in brackets.

Exclude directories in PowerShell:

Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {$_ -isnot [IO.DirectoryInfo]}

Or it's terse, but harder to read version:

gci | ? {$_ -isnot [io.directoryinfo]}

Credit goes to @Joey for his insightful comment using the -is operator :)

However

Technically, I prefer including only Files or only Directories since excluding can lead to unexpected results as Get-ChildItem can return more than just files and directories :)

Include just Files:

Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {$_ -is [IO.FileInfo]}

Or:

gci | ? {$_ -is [io.fileinfo]}

Include just Directories:

Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {$_ -is [IO.DirectoryInfo]}

Or:

gci | ? {$_ -is [io.directoryinfo]}