easiest way to read all lines from all files in a directory in powershell

Question

This expression seems to work:

gci . | % { gc $_}

This also seem to work as well (I suspect it is a little slower):

gci . | Select-String . 

Is there a better way of writing a expression to dump all lines from all files out in a directory?

Thanks

Answer 1

Well you don't want to throw directories at Get-Content. Try this to filter out dirs:

Get-ChildItem | Where {!$_.PSIsContainer} | Get-Content

or using aliases:

gci | ?{!$_.PSIsContainer} | gc

Also note that Get-Content takes the filename as pipeline input so you don't need the Foreach-Object cmdlet. You can pipe directly to Get-Content.

Answer 2

Won't this one do?

gc * -ea SilentlyContinue