What is a file system from the Windows PowerShell point of view?

A file system represents a logical tree of directories and files to store information on an device outside the computer CPU. For example, a hard disk drive can be considered as a filesystem.

There are several interesting features supported by PowerShell on file systems:

1. A file system can be mapped a network shared drive.

2. Reference names of drives, directories and files are not case sensitive. For example, to get the files and folders on the C drive, you refer to the "C:" drive or the "c:" drive.

3. A fully qualified reference name of a directory (or a file) includes the drive name, followed by a colon, any directory and subdirectory names, and the directory name (or the file name).

4. Each element of the fully qualified reference name must be separated either by a backslash (\) or a forward slash (/). This is also called absolute path name. For example, the following example shows the fully qualified name for the Shell.dll file in the System32 subdirectory of the Windows directory on the C drive:

C:\Windows\System32\shell.dll
C:/Windows/System32/shell.dll

5. If any element in the fully qualified name includes spaces, you must enclose the name in quotation marks. For example,

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"

6. The current directory in the file system is represented by a dot or period character (.) For example, if the current location is the C:\Windows\System32 directory, the following two refer to the same directory:

.
C:/Windows/System32

7. A directory or a file can also be referenced a path name relative to the current location. This also called relative path name. For example, if the current location is the C:\Windows\System32 directory, the following two refer to the same file:

./shell.dll
C:/Windows/System32/shell.dll

8. Two dots (..) can be used to as an element in both absolute and relative path names to represent the parent directory. This allows us to refer to a file in multiple ways. For example, if the current location is the C:\Windows\System32 directory, the following are all refer to the same file:

./shell.dll
./../System32/shell.dll
./../../Windows/System32/shell.dll
C:/Windows/System32/shell.dll
C:/Windows/System32/../System32/shell.dll

⇒ Get and Change Directory in Windows PowerShell

⇐ Work with File System in Windows PowerShell

⇑ Work with File System in Windows PowerShell

⇑⇑ Windows PowerShell Tutorials