In most example that I see in tutorials and books, the -LiteralPath option is almost never used by default (the -Path option seems to be preferred). Because the -LiteralPath option allows to use reserved characters (e.g. []), I don’t understand why it is not used more often (if not, all the time). Is it because it is preferred to escape reserved characters manually, because it has a high performance cost, because not all cmdlet support this option or because something else?

One thing to consider is that -Path is most likely to be the parameter that used when a string is passed in through the pipeline.

Looking at the Get-Item cmdlet for instance:

Default

-LiteralPath <string[]> Required? true Position? Named Accept pipeline input? true (ByPropertyName) Parameter set name LiteralPath Aliases PSPath Dynamic? false -Path <string[]> Required? true Position? 0 Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue, ByPropertyName) Parameter set name Path Aliases None Dynamic? false

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-LiteralPath   Required? true Position? Named Accept pipeline input? true (ByPropertyName) Parameter set name LiteralPath Aliases PSPath Dynamic? false   -Path   Required? true Position? 0 Accept pipeline input? true (ByValue, ByPropertyName) Parameter set name Path Aliases None Dynamic? false

Piping a string gets you -Path. Your object(s) would have to have a LiteralPath (or PSPath) property for Get-Item to use it. If your object has both, -Path is used.

I guess this doesn’t necessarily answer the question; it’s a bit circular to say “-Path is used more often because it’s more popular”. A better question might be, “Why doesn’t -Path behave like -LiteralPath in the first place?”