Powershell: Removing a hidden file in Unix results in RemoveFileSystemItemUnAuthorizedAccess

[r-darwish]

Steps to reproduce

New-Item .x
Remove-Item .x

Expected behavior

The file should either be removed without having to specify -Force. Removing it with /bin/rm .x works without needing to specify -f

Actual behavior

Remove-Item : You do not have sufficient access rights to perform this operation.                                                                                                                                                                                                          At line:1 char:1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           + Remove-Item .x                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           + CategoryInfo          : PermissionDenied: (/tmp/.x:FileInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemUnAuthorizedAccess,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand

Environment data

Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      6.2.3
PSEdition                      Core
GitCommitId                    6.2.3
OS                             Darwin 19.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.0.0: Thu Oct 17 16:17:15 PDT 2019; root:xnu-6153.41.3~29/RELEASE_X86_64
Platform                       Unix
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion              3.0

[mburszley]

For clarity, your OS is macOS Catalina.

[r-darwish]

Correct. However, I just tested the same version of Powershell in Arch Linux. The results are the same but with a slightly different error id:

Remove-Item : You do not have sufficient access rights to perform this operation.
At line:1 char:1
+ Remove-Item .x
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : PermissionDenied: (/home/roey/src/aur/topgrade/.x:FileInfo) [Remove-Item], IOException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : RemoveFileSystemItemUnAuthorizedAccess,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand

[vexx32]

I think this behaviour is inherited from the FileSystem provider and possibly from .NET Core's System.IO.File APIs. On Windows, this behaviour is the same (and always has been) -- you need to specify -Force to remove hidden files.

Not sure if we'd want to change this behaviour specifically for Unix or not, though. @SteveL-MSFT thoughts? 😊

[SteveL-MSFT]

It seems that the behavior is consistent within PowerShell so probably shouldn't change that. Seems like the error could be better saying because it is hidden and not a permission problem.

[BrucePay]

The design with hidden files was that -force should be required for all operations e.g. ls -force to list them, etc. Technically, using -force expands the set of operation you can do so the "insufficient access rights" message makes "sense" if you fully understand the design. But practically, a message saying "use -force to delete hidden files" would be more useful. Alternately we could simply remove the restriction so no message is required.