rm -f equivalent for PowerShell that ignore nonexistent files

Question

Background

I have a PowerShell script that writes some results into a file.

• I want to remove the result file automatically at the start of the script with Remove-Item.
• You can remove the result file manually, so I don't want to show error messages even if the result file doesn't exist.
• I want to show error messages when the script couldn't remove the result file for another reason, e.g. the file is locked.

You can fulfill all the requirements above with rm -f in Unix-like systems.

Problem

First I have tried Remove-Item -Force, but it couldn't ignore nonexistent files (cf. rm -f ignores nonexistent files).

PS C:\tmp> Remove-Item C:\tmp\foo.txt -Force
Remove-Item : Cannot find path 'C:\tmp\foo.txt' because it does not exist.
At line:1 char:1
+ Remove-Item C:\tmp\foo.txt -Force
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (C:\tmp\foo.txt:String) [Remove-Item], ItemNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.RemoveItemCommand

Next, I have tried Remove-Item -ErrorAction Ignore and Remove-Item -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue, but they don't show error messages when they failed to remove the file (cf. rm -f shows an error message like rm: cannot remove 'foo.txt': Operation not permitted in this situation).

PS C:\tmp> $file = [System.IO.File]::Open('C:\tmp\foo.txt',[System.IO.FileMode]::Open,[System.IO.FileAccess]::Read,[System.IO.FileShare]::None)
PS C:\tmp> Remove-Item C:\tmp\foo.txt -ErrorAction Ignore
# I expected it shows an error because it couldn't remove the file because of the lock, but it showed nothing

PS C:\tmp> $file = [System.IO.File]::Open('C:\tmp\foo.txt',[System.IO.FileMode]::Open,[System.IO.FileAccess]::Read,[System.IO.FileShare]::None)
PS C:\tmp> Remove-Item C:\tmp\foo.txt -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
# I expected it shows an error because it couldn't remove the file because of the lock, but it showed nothing

Question

Is there rm -f equivalent in PowerShell that fulfills all the requirements above?

Answer 1

To me, the simplest solution is:

if (test-path $file) {
  remove-item $file
}

This also occurs to me. $error[0] is always the most recent error.

remove-item $file -erroraction silentlycontinue
if ($error[0] -notmatch 'does not exist') {
  write-error $error[0]  # to standard error
}

I think you can also use try/catch with specific exceptions. Here's an example. I found the exception through tab completion. But the script will stop with other uncaught exceptions. This error doesn't normally stop.

try { remove-item foo -erroraction stop }
catch [System.Management.Automation.ItemNotFoundException] { $null }
'hi'