Find out whether a file is a symbolic link in PowerShell

Question

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

Answer 1

My results on Vista, using Keith Hill's powershell script to test symlinks and hardlinks:

c:\markus\other>mklink symlink.doc \temp\2006rsltns.doc
symbolic link created for symlink.doc <<===>> \temp\2006rsltns.doc

c:\markus\other>fsutil hardlink create HARDLINK.doc  \temp\2006rsltns.doc
Hardlink created for c:\markus\other\HARDLINK.doc <<===>> c:\temp\2006rsltns.doc

c:\markus\other>dir
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is C8BC-2EBD

 Directory of c:\markus\other

02/12/2010  05:21 PM    <DIR>          .
02/12/2010  05:21 PM    <DIR>          ..
01/10/2006  06:12 PM            25,088 HARDLINK.doc
02/12/2010  05:21 PM    <SYMLINK>      symlink.doc [\temp\2006rsltns.doc]
               2 File(s)         25,088 bytes
               2 Dir(s)   6,805,803,008 bytes free

c:\markus\other>powershell \script\IsSymLink.ps1 HARDLINK.doc
False

c:\\markus\other>powershell \script\IsSymLink.ps1 symlink.doc
True

It shows that symlinks are reparse points, and have the ReparsePoint FileAttribute bit set, while hardlinks do not.