How to normalize and compare paths in Powershell

Question

I need to test two strings, which contain paths, for wether they point to the same directory or not.
Simply using a string comparison fails when comparing C:\Windows with C:\Windows\ for example.

This problem can be solved by using Join-Path as per this StackOverflow-Question, but it still leaves out other things:
For example \\server\share can sometimes be represented as UNC\server\share or \\<ip>\share

Is there a proper way to check this without using a workaround?

Answer 1

For now I am using this as a workaround:

function Format-Path(){
    [Cmdletbinding()]
    param($Path)

    Write-Verbose "Format-Path: $Path"
    if($Path.StartsWith(".")){
        #Get Absolute path if path starts with "."
        $Path = Resolve-Path -Path $Path
        Write-Verbose "Resolved Path: $Path"
    }
    if($Path -match "^.*::(.*)"){
        $Path = $Path -replace "^.*::(.*)", '$1'
        Write-Verbose "Replaced Powershell providers: $Path"
    }
    $Path = $Path -replace "/"                      , "\" `
                  -replace "^\\\\\.\\"              , "" `
                  -replace "^\\\\\?\\"              , "" `
                  -replace "^UNC\\"                 , "\\"
    Write-Verbose "Replaced UNC conventions: $Path"

    if($Path -match "^\\\\([A-Za-z]+)(@SSL)?"){
        $Path = $Path -replace "^\\\\([A-Za-z]+)(@SSL)?", "\\$((Resolve-DnsName $matches[1] -Type "A").IPAddress)"
        Write-Verbose "Resolve name into IP: $Path"
    }

    return $Path.TrimEnd("\")
}