Can anyone explain this output when using the Get-ChildItem cmdlet to list files in a folder that doesn’t exist? For example:
Get-ChildItem -Path "c:nonexisitantfolder" -recurse
I assumed that it would start in the given path and fail immediately as the path doesn’t exist. Instead it seems to scan the whole drive (or at least I’m guessing this is what’s happening as it outputs occasional access denied messages for unrelated folders) then eventual fails. It’s almost as it when the absolute path can’t be found – and surely this is definitely an absolute path in the Windows world – it starts looking for it as a relative subfolder path?
Note: I’m not trying to list files in a nonexisitant directory, I stumbled across this unlikely behaviour when testing how a script would respond to being given a false directory name as input.
1
tl;dr
To avoid the problematic behavior, use -LiteralPath rather than -Path
# Fails, if the target path doesn't exist, thanks to `-LiteralPath`
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath "c:nonexistentfolder" -Recurse
Get-ChildItem‘s -Path parameter by design treats a given path as a wildcard expression.
Also note that if you don’t specify -Path explicitly before the path argument, it is positionally implied.
The unexpected part is that when combined with -Recurse, the last component of a path bound to -Path is unexpectedly looked for on every level of the parent path’s directory subtree – even if that last component doesn’t contain actual wildcard metacharacters such as * and ?.
That is, Get-ChildItem -Path "C:nonexistentfolder" -Recurse looks for files and folders named nonexistentfolder on every level of the directory subtree of C:.
This problematic and potentially destructive behavior is the subject of GitHub issue #5699.
By contrast, -LiteralPath by design treats its arguments literally and uses them as-is.
This is a expected behaviour, the script attempts to resolve the non-existent path as a relative path. This causes PowerShell to start from the current working directory and recursively search for the folder, potentially scanning the entire C drive if it’s not found in subdirectories.
To scan only the non-existent folder, use the Test-Path cmdlet to check if it exists before listing its contents. If the folder doesn’t exist, display a warning message. The script will avoid unnecessary scanning of other directories and provide a more efficient approach.