PowerShell: Path Expansion (get fullpath)

Some characters have special meaning in the value of Path parameter. Example:

• ~ at beginning → Same as $home
• . at beginning → Current dir. Same as (Get-Location)
• .. at beginning → Parent dir.
• * → String Wildcards

Path will be “expanded”, to result in full path or multiple paths. This is called path expansion.

Path expansion happen after string expansion. [see PowerShell: String]

To see what a given path expand to, use Resolve-Path.

Resolve-Path

Resolves the wildcard characters in a path, show result.

Resolve-Path ~/

# Path
# ----
# C:\Users\xah

Resolve-Path "~/Documents/*"

# Path
# ----
# C:\Users\xah\Documents\PowerShell
# C:\Users\xah\Documents\Wolfram Desktop
# C:\Users\xah\Documents\wolframlang

Note: quoted path goes thru string expansion first, then go thru path expansion. To not go thru path expansion, use parameter LiteralPath.