Find out whether a file is a symbolic link in PowerShell

powershell symlink hardlink
Joey picture Joey · May 3, 2009 · Viewed 27.3k times · Source

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.FileInfo) is a hard link or not?

If not, would it be easier with symbolic links (symlinks)?

Answer

Keith Hill picture Keith Hill · May 3, 2009

Try this:

function Test-ReparsePoint([string]$path) {
  $file = Get-Item $path -Force -ea SilentlyContinue
  return [bool]($file.Attributes -band [IO.FileAttributes]::ReparsePoint)
}

It is a pretty minimal implementation, but it should do the trick. Note that this doesn't distinguish between a hard link and a symbolic link. Underneath, they both just take advantage of NTFS reparse points, IIRC.

Related questions

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
powershell to resolve junction target path

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 …

Read More
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