Find the first file that matches a pattern using PowerShell

I would like to select any one ".xls" file in a directory. The problem is the dir command can return different types.

gci *.xls

will return

• object[] if there is more than one file
• FileInfo if there is exactly one file
• null if there are no files

I can deal with null, but how do I just select the "first" file?

You can force PowerShell into returning an array, even when only one item is present by wrapping a statement into @(...):

@(gci *.xls)[0]

will work for each of your three cases:

• it returns the first object of a collection of files
• it returns the only object if there is only one
• it returns $null of there wasn't any object to begin with

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There is also the -First parameter to Select-Object:

Get-ChildItem -Filter *.xls | Select-Object -First 1
gci -fi *.xls | select -f 1

which works pretty much identical to the above, except that the list of files doesn't need to be enumerated completely by Get-ChildItem, as the pipeline is aborted after the first item. This can make a difference when there are many files matching the filter.