PowerShell: Path Expansion (get fullpath)

By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .

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

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, prints result.

return a single object of PathInfo, or array of it. (return a string or array of string if Relative parameter is used.)

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.

PowerShell Path