Change path separator in Windows PowerShell

Question

Is it possible to get PowerShell to always output / instead of \? For example, I'd like the output of get-location to be C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator.

Update

Thanks for the examples of using replace, but I was hoping for this to happen globally (e.g. tab completion, etc.). Based on Matt's observation that the separator is defined by System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar which appears in practice and from the documentation to be read-only, I'm guessing this isn't possible.

Answer 1

It's a good question. The underlying .NET framework surfaces this as System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar, and it's a read/write property, so I figured you could do this:

[IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar = '/'

... and that appears to succeed, except if you then type this:

[IO.Path]::DirectorySeparatorChar

... it tells you that it's still '\'. It's like it's not "taking hold". Heck, I'm not even sure that PowerShell honours that particular value even if it was changing.

I thought I'd post this (at the risk of it not actually answering your question) in case it helps someone else find the real answer. I'm sure it would be something to do with that DirectorySeparatorChar field.

Answer 2

Replace "\" with "/".

PS C:\Users\dance2die> $path =  "C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator"
PS C:\Users\dance2die> $path.Replace("\", "/")
C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator