René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"[S.M.A.Internal.AutomationNull]::Value is treated like a collection when used with -match, -notmatch, -like, -notlike","articleBody":"Steps to reproduce\r\n------------------\r\n```PowerShell\r\nSet-Content -Value $null -Path .\\zero.txt -NoNewline -Encoding Ascii\r\n(get-item .\\zero.txt).Length -eq 0 # returns $true\r\n$content = gc .\\zero.txt -Raw -Encoding Ascii\r\n$content -eq $null # returns $true\r\n$null -eq $content # returns $true\r\n$content -match 'anything' # returns nothing, but should return $false\r\n[System.Management.Automation.Internal.AutomationNull]::Value -match 'anything' # ditto\r\n$null -match 'anything' # returns $false\r\n```\r\n\r\nExpected behavior\r\n-----------------\r\n```PowerShell\r\n$true\r\n$true\r\n$true\r\n$false\r\n$false\r\n$false\r\n```\r\n\r\nActual behavior\r\n---------------\r\n```PowerShell\r\n$true\r\n$true\r\n$true\r\n# returns nothing at all\r\n# returns nothing at all\r\n$false\r\n```\r\n\r\nImpact\r\n------\r\nThis makes it more difficult to write scripts that process content in files, because tests that should fail return nothing instead, so if you were checking for a failure and then jumping to the next iteration of the loop with continue, your continue does not get called and then unpredictable things can happen as a result.\r\n\r\nEnvironment data\r\n----------------\r\nReproduced in PowerShell 5.1 and 6.0.","author":{"url":"https://github.com/KirkMunro","@type":"Person","name":"KirkMunro"},"datePublished":"2017-05-25T21:42:59.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":22},"url":"https://github.com/3866/PowerShell/issues/3866"}