Simple Powershell lastwritetime compare

Question

I need a Powershell script that can access a file's properties and discover the LastWriteTime property and compare it with the current date and return the date difference.

I have something like this...

$writedate = Get-ItemProperty -Path $source -Name lastwritetime

...but I can not cast the lastwritetime to a "DateTime" datatype. It says, "Cannot concert "@{lastwritetime=...date...}" to "System.DateTime".

Any help would be highly appreciated!

Thanks to everyone in advance.

Answer 1

Try the following.

$d = [datetime](Get-ItemProperty -Path $source -Name LastWriteTime).lastwritetime

This is part of the item property weirdness. When you run Get-ItemProperty it does not return the value but instead the property. You have to use one more level of indirection to get to the value.

Answer 2

ls | % {(get-date) - $_.LastWriteTime }

Can works, to retrieve the diff, you can replace ls with a single file.