Getting a parent's parent for a folder using power shell

suren424 I am no expert on ACL's, inheritance and permissions, and have never used get-acl in anger, but I can see the difference in your two scripts is on line 5

$Permission=get-acl -Path $the_shares

vs

$Permission=get-acl -Path $allfolders.Parent.FullName

$the_shares is a simple text constant, and PS know nothing more about it.  $allfolders is an object that represents the folder named in the text constant.  This allows us to access it's properties dynamically, such as it's parent folder.

$allFolders=Get-ItemProperty -Path $the_shares

In Script 2, we are getting (into $permission variable) the ACL on the Parent's Path, but in Script 1, we are getting the ACL on $the_shares text value.  Therefore, Script 1 does nothing except copy the permissions from $the_shares, and then applies it back to itself without changing it...so it is redundant.

If get-acl set-acl is indeed the correct way to set inheritance, then I think you would find Script 2 does what you wanted if the parent folder has a length greater than 1. 

But as farismalaeb mentioned  Here in his post on Monday, if the length is one, you would want to first get-acl of $allfolders.Parent.Parent.FullName, and set-acl on $allfolders.Parent.FullName, THEN you would get-acl of $allfolders.Parent.FullName, and set-acl on $allfolders.FullName, so that you respect the Grandfather, Father, Son relationship  (apologies if the choice of pronoun offends 😉 ) and apply the relationship in the correct order

suren424 Sure, Here is how I would handle that:

function setPermissions([string]$theshare) {
    $allFolders=Get-ItemProperty -Path $theshare
    if (($allFolders.Parent.Name).Length -eq 1){
    Write-Host "The Parent Length is Only 1" 
    Write-Host "Setting the permissions of" $allfolders.Name "based on" $allfolders.Parent.Parent.Name
    $Permission=get-acl -Path $allfolders.Parent.Parent.FullName
    $Permission.SetAccessRuleProtection($False,$true)
    Set-Acl -Path $allfolders.FullName -AclObject $Permission
    }
    Else{
    Write-Host "The Parent Length is longer than 1"
    Write-Host "Setting the permissions of" $allfolders.Name "based on" $allfolders.Parent.Name
    $Permission=get-acl -Path $allfolders.Parent.FullName
    $Permission.SetAccessRuleProtection($False,$true)
    Set-Acl -Path $allfolders.FullName -AclObject $Permission
    }
}


#Method 1 - Hardcoded array
Write-Host "Method 1 - Hardcoded array" -ForegroundColor Green
$the_shares = ('C:\Share2\a\test','C:\Share1\abc1')
foreach ($f in $the_shares) {
    setPermissions $f
}

#Method 2 - Iterate a folder and process all sub folders
Write-Host "Method 2 - Iterate a folder and process all sub folders" -ForegroundColor Green
Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\share1" | foreach{setPermissions $_.FullName}

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