Get-Content : Cannot find path because it does not exist

The error

PS C:\work\app> Get-Content src\config.ts
Get-Content : Cannot find path 'C:\work\app\src\config.ts' because it does not exist.

PowerShell 7 writes Get-Content: with no space before the colon. Get-ChildItem, Get-Item, Copy-Item, Remove-Item and Set-Location give the same message.

Why it happens

The file isn't there. This is the usual one, and the one coding agents hit most: they guess where a file lives, src\config.ts when it's apps\web\src\config.ts, and read it without looking first. The full path in the message shows exactly where PowerShell looked.

A relative path, read from another folder. PowerShell resolves it against its current location, which Set-Location (cd) changes. .NET methods don't follow Set-Location: after cd sub, Get-Content notes.txt reads sub\notes.txt, but [IO.File]::ReadAllText('notes.txt') looks in the folder PowerShell started in, and fails with Could not find file.

Brackets in the name. A path is a wildcard pattern, and [1] matches the character 1, so notes[1].txt never matches itself. The message is a different one:

PS> Get-Content 'notes[1].txt'
Get-Content : An object at the specified path notes[1].txt does not exist, or has been filtered by the -Include or
-Exclude parameter.

Test-Path 'notes[1].txt' says False too, though the file is there.

The fix

Look before you read, and find the file by its name when the path is a guess:

Test-Path src\config.ts                         # False: the path is wrong
Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Filter config.ts | Select-Object FullName
rg --files | rg config.ts                       # quicker in a big repo

For a name with brackets, turn the wildcards off:

Get-Content -LiteralPath 'notes[1].txt'
Test-Path -LiteralPath 'notes[1].txt'          # True

Before passing a relative path to a .NET method, make it a full one:

[IO.File]::ReadAllText((Resolve-Path notes.txt).Path)