Powershell Get-ChildItem returns object not array

Question

It seems Get-ChildItem returns a single object instead of an array of one object if it only finds one item. For example this returns 5:

$files = Get-ChildItem -Filter "e*.txt"
$files.length

But the following should return 1 but returns 61321:

$files = Get-ChildItem -Filter "exact.txt"
$files.length

The 61321 is the size in bytes of the file exact.txt.

How can we consistently check if there were files found?

Marc · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-26 12:05:34Z

16

It is a "feature" of Get-ChildItem that it won't return an array with one item but instead the single object. To force an array append @ as in:

$files = @(Get-ChildItem -Filter "e*.txt")

Alternatively if you just want to check if there are NO files you can do:

$files = Get-ChildItem -Filter "exact.txt"
if (!$files) {"No Files"}

answered Sep 26, 2016 at 12:05

Marc

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2 Comments

Marc Over a year ago

Note, if Get-ChildItem returns $null you will still end up with an array with 1 item in it: $files[0] -eq $null will be true! You will not get an empty array with length 0. See issue here: stackoverflow.com/questions/40523767/…

Andreas Feb 11 at 16:07

I cannot reproduce that. @(Get-ChildItem -Filter Foo).Count returns 0

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