Converting Get-ChildItem output to string[]

Question

I have a script that accepts a list of paths to process as an array of strings. I'm using `Get-ChildItem` to generate those paths. I've come across some interesting behavior in the conversion from `System.IO.FileInfo` objects to strings. Example 1: ``` PS C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents> [string[]](Get-ChildItem .\GitHub\) toc toc-gh-pages Publish gh-pages.txt ``` Example 2: ``` PS C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents> [string[]](Get-ChildItem .\GitHub\*) C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents\GitHub	oc C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents\GitHub	oc-gh-pages C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents\GitHub\Publish gh-pages.txt ``` Example 3: (With -Recurse, so the conversion to strings is illogical and useless) ``` PS C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents\GitHub> [string[]](Get-ChildItem .	oc-gh-pages -Recurse) assets css lib _layouts _site .gitattributes .gitignore index.html _config.yml jquery.toc.zip docs.less docs.min.css google-code-prettify jquery.toc lang-apollo.js ... ``` Example 4: ``` PS C:\Users\Nikhil\Documents\GitHub> [string[]](Get-Chi…

Accepted Answer

Logical answer:

You are casting the `FileInfo` objects to strings. When you do `gci path`, you have files and directories only from that folder. So it is ok to just convert to the name of the item.

When you are using `gci path\*`, it is across folders, and just converting to names is not valid, so it includes the path.

Depending on whether you want name or the full path, do this:

```
gci $path | select -expand Name
```

or

```
gci $path | select -expand FullName
```

Converting Get-ChildItem output to string[]

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