I’ve got close to a million files and folders on a Windows server with file names that are polluted with Apple MacOS special characters in random places. Some of these characters create robocopy errors when archiving.

The offending special characters are:

1. Zero Width Space (0x200b)
2. U+F028 Unicode character

I can find these files in Windows File Explorer by using these commands in the Search tool.

1. name:~”​“
2. name:~”“

I wish to rename them, deleting the special character.

I have Googled at length and PowerShell seems to be the way forward.
I’ve devised a script that I could run from the root path of the drive, but I am not sure if this script is optimised (or a wise choice).

#Set location to run from
set-location -Path "P:"

#Rename folders containing Zero Width Spaces
$folders = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Directory | Sort-Object
$folders | ForEach-Object {
    set-location $_.Parent.FullName
    Rename-Item $_.Name ($_.Name -replace("​", ""))
}

#Rename folders containing U+F028
$folders = Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Directory | Sort-Object
$folders | ForEach-Object {
    set-location $_.Parent.FullName
    Rename-Item $_.Name ($_.Name -replace("", ""))
}

#Rename files containing Zero Width Spaces
$files = Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse
$files | ForEach-Object {
 Rename-Item -Path $_.PSPath -NewName $_.Name.replace("​","")
}

#Rename files containing U+F028
$files = Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse
$files | ForEach-Object {
 Rename-Item -Path $_.PSPath -NewName $_.Name.replace("","")
}

I believe the logic is correct.
My artificial test scenario (some demo files and folders) works.

But am I about to crash a server by running this at scale?!