Find out whether a file is a symbolic link in PowerShell

If you have Powershell 5+ the following one-liner recursively lists all file hardlinks, directory junctions and symbolic links and their targets starting from d:\Temp\:

dir 'd:\Temp' -recurse -force | ?{$_.LinkType} | select FullName,LinkType,Target

Output:

FullName                                LinkType     Target
--------                                --------     ------
D:\Temp\MyJunctionDir                   Junction     {D:\exp\junction_target_dir}
D:\Temp\MySymLinkDir                    SymbolicLink {D:\exp\symlink_target_dir}
D:\Temp\MyHardLinkFile.txt              HardLink     {D:\temp\MyHardLinkFile2.txt, D:\exp\hlink_target.xml}
D:\Temp\MyHardLinkFile2.txt             HardLink     {D:\temp\MyHardLinkFile.txt, D:\exp\hlink_target.xml}
D:\Temp\MySymLinkFile.txt               SymbolicLink {D:\exp\symlink_target.xml}
D:\Temp\MySymLinkDir\MySymLinkFile2.txt SymbolicLink {D:\temp\normal file.txt}

If you care about multiple targets for hardlinks use this variation which lists targets tab-separated:

dir 'd:\Temp' -recurse -force | ?{$_.LinkType} | select FullName,LinkType,@{ Name = "Targets"; Expression={$_.Target -join "`t"} }

You may need administrator privileges to run this script on say C:\.

Try this:

function Test-ReparsePoint([string]$path) {
  $file = Get-Item $path -Force -ea SilentlyContinue
  return [bool]($file.Attributes -band [IO.FileAttributes]::ReparsePoint)
}

It is a pretty minimal implementation, but it should do the trick. Note that this doesn't distinguish between a hard link and a symbolic link. Underneath, they both just take advantage of NTFS reparse points, IIRC.