powershell to resolve junction target path

powershell symlink junction
ash picture ash · Jun 4, 2013 · Viewed 14.6k times · Source

In PowerShell, I need resolve the target path of a junction (symlink).

for example, say I have a junction c:\someJunction whose target is c:\temp\target

I tried variations of $junc = Get-Item c:\someJunction, but was only able to get c:\someJunction

How do I find the target path of the junction, in this example c:\temp\target, of a given junction?

Answer

Stepan Kokhanovskiy picture Stepan Kokhanovskiy · Sep 6, 2016

New-Item, Remove-Item, and Get-ChildItem have been enhanced to support creating and managing symbolic links. The -ItemType parameter for New-Item accepts a new value, SymbolicLink. Now you can create symbolic links in a single line by running the New-Item cmdlet.

What's New in Windows PowerShell v5

I've checked the symlink support on the my Windows 7 machine, it's works fine.

PS> New-Item -Type SymbolicLink -Target C:\ -Name TestSymlink


    Directory: C:\Users\skokhanovskiy\Desktop


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d----l       06.09.2016     18:27                TestSymlink

Get target of the symbolic link as easy as to create it.

> Get-Item .\TestSymlink | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Target
C:\

Related questions

Powershell Remove Symbolic Link Windows

I am having issues when removing SymbolicLinks which I have created with New-Item: New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path C:\SPI -Target "C:\Users\Chino\Dropbox (Reserve Membership)\" I need to modify the link because it has the wrong -Target, which should …

Read More
Creating hard and soft links using PowerShell

Can PowerShell 1.0 create hard and soft links analogous to the Unix variety? If this isn't built in, can someone point me to a site that has a ps1 script that mimics this? This is a necessary function of any good …

Read More
Find out whether a file is a symbolic link in PowerShell

I am having a PowerShell script which is walking a directory tree, and sometimes I have auxiliary files hardlinked there which should not be processed. Is there an easy way of finding out whether a file (that is, System.IO.…

Read More