PowerShell quirk 2

tl;dr

Let's say you have a File[1].txt file and you would like to read it.

Get-Content "File[1].txt"

^ this returns nothing

Why?

PowerShell interprets [] as special characters. A range in this case. PowerShell is actually looking for a file named File1.txt.

What to do?

Get-Content "File``[1``].txt"

longer reads

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21008180/copy-file-with-square-brackets-in-the-filename-and-use-wildcard
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-powershell-1.0/ff730956(v=technet.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN