Powershell 5 Get-ChildItem LiteralPath doesn't work with Include anymore

Question

Right now I updated to Windows 10 TH2 Build 10586 with PowerShell 5.0.10586.0

Now I got a problem with Get-ChildItem

$files = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $path -Force -Recurse -Include *.txt

This returns ALL files in $path even they are not .txt. This was working before the update. When I change it to

$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Force -Recurse -Include *.txt

it works again. But that's not what I want. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

Personally, I never use -Include or -Exclude anymore. I always pipe through Where-Object. I don't know if the author of -Include and -Exclude was insane or if there's a problem with the underlying .Net provider, but they're flaky as hell.

I'm on 5.0.10240.16384.

gci -Path $path -Include *.txt -Force

Returns nothing.

gci -LiteralPath $path -Include *.txt -Force

Returns everything in $path.

gci -LiteralPath $path -Include *.txt -Force -Recurse
gci -Path $path -Include *.txt -Force -Recurse

Both return *.txt in $path and all subfolders.

So what's the proper behavior supposed to be? Does the -Recurse flag modify how -Include works? I don't know. I no longer care. I'm not going to deal with that kind of behavior. I just use this:

gci -Path $path -Recurse -Force | Where-Object { $_.Extension -eq '.txt' }

I rely on Get-ChildItem to enumerate files and folders and that's it. Just give me the objects and I'll filter them. Like all the old Remove-Item -Recurse bugs, there's something there that just doesn't work the way people expect it to.

Answer 2

I think this is a regression. I submitted it as v5 regression: Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath -Recurse ignores -Include and gets all items

Answer 3

Note that -Filter does not seem to have this issue. This works:

$files = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $path -Force -Recurse -Filter *.txt

Filter is also more efficient, because it is used by the underlying provider (as opposed to Include which is applied by PowerShell itself, much like a where clause added by your code).

However Filter only accepts one pattern parameter, whereas Include supports multiple patterns.