Powershell: Support Question - Best practice for cross-platform paths

[chriskuech]

Support Question

If I'm on *nix, my paths use /; if I'm on Windows, my paths use \. This isn't much of an issue, as I believe it mostly only affects aesthetics of printed paths. What is the best practice for maintaining consistent path output cross-platform?

Possibly related--
If I'm on *nix, my PATHs use : delimeters; if I'm on Windows, my PATHs use ; delimiters. Would a similar strategy apply?

[vexx32]

You have a couple options. One is to just avoid dealing with paths directly, and always use Joi-Path and Split-Path as needed. I tend to do this a fair bit.

Another option is to use a variable separator, for example the slash for paths on the current system is exposed in [System.IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar so you can just define a variable like ${/} = [IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar and just use that variable to insert platform appropriate slashes.

With respect to PATH separators, a similar thing applies; you can pull the appropriate character frow [System.IO.Path]::PathSeparator

Also, where slashes are concerned you can often cheat a bit and just always use forward slashes in a lot of cases. Windows filesystems don't care which slash you want to use, but Unix only recognises forward slash, so you could opt to just always use forward slashes.

[Jaykul]

The simple answer is:

• Always use forward slashes / -- Windows is more forgiving.
• Always Convert-Path when passing paths to applications -- PowerShell's PSDrives result in paths that aren't real (e.g. the new Temp: drive in PS7)

[chriskuech]

Thanks all