Brackets Treated As Special Characters In Single Quotes #9541
Description
Steps to reproduce
In File Explorer on an NTFS volume, create the file: [abc].txt
Following this run:
ls '[abc].txt'Expected behavior
Directory: C:\Users\Dave
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a---- 2019-05-06 12:07 AM 0 [abc].txt
Actual behavior
No output displayed.
Environment data
Name Value
---- -----
PSVersion 6.2.0
PSEdition Core
GitCommitId 6.2.0
OS Microsoft Windows 10.0.17763
Platform Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion 2.3
SerializationVersion 1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion 3.0
Additional Cases and Information
The file name can be displayed using tab completion, but the brackets are preceded by back ticks, which indicates that Windows can see the file and assumes that the brackets are special characters. When attempting to list the file using the ls command, the following error is generated:
ls : Cannot find path 'C:\Users\Dave\`[abc`].txt' because it does not exist.
At line:1 char:1
+ ls '.\`[abc`].txt'
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (C:\Users\Dave\`[abc`].txt:String) [Get-ChildItem], ItemNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetChildItemCommand
Other commands generate no output or errors as well.
Get-FileHash '[abc].txt'
# Generates no output
1 | Out-File '[abc].txt'
# Generates error stating that the wildcard path did not resolve to a fileAccording to Microsoft's "About Quoting Rules" page, "When you enclose a string in single-quotation marks (a single-quoted string), the string is passed to the command exactly as you type it. No substitution is performed".