Interesting Issues with Join-Path in PowerShell - Brain Dump 4

Another post part of the brain dump series

It turns out that Join-Path can't be used reliably for remote paths, allow me to explain

This will work fine:

PS C:\Users\John> Join-Path "\\SecretMachine\E$\SecretDirectory" "ReallySecretDirectory"

\\SecretMachine\E$\SecretDirectory\ReallySecretDirectory

But this won't:

PS C:\Users\John> Join-Path "E:\SecretDirectory" "ReallySecretDirectory"
Join-Path : Cannot find drive. A drive with the name 'e' does not exist.
At line:1 char:10
+ Join-Path <<<<  "e:\SecretDirectory" "ReallySecretDirectory"
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (e:String) [Join-Path], DriveNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DriveNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.JoinPathCommand

Essentially, Join-Path can handle non-existent UNC paths but if it looks like a local path it expects it to be there.

You can force Join-Path to try to resolve the UNC path but it doesn't look like you can prevent it for local paths.

PS C:\Users\John> Join-Path "\\SecretMachine\F$" "SecretDirectory" -Resolve
Join-Path : Cannot find path '\\SecretMachine\F$\SecretDirectory' because it does not exist.
At line:1 char:10
+ Join-Path <<<<  "\\SecretMachine\F$" "SecretDirectory" -Resolve
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (\\SecretMachine\F$\SecretDirectory:String) [Join-Path], ItemNotFoundExc
   eption
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.JoinPathCommand