Prefer literal Select-Object property matches by KirtiRamchandani · Pull Request #27515 · PowerShell/PowerShell

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PR Summary

Makes Select-Object prefer an exact property-name match before treating wildcard-looking property arguments as wildcard patterns.

PR Context

Fix #25982.

The cmdlet currently treats property names containing wildcard characters only as wildcard patterns, even when the input object has a property whose literal name matches the requested value. This means a generated object with a property such as Foo[] cannot reliably select or expand that property even when the caller uses [WildcardPattern]::Escape().

This change checks for a literal property match first, using the wildcard-unescaped property expression where applicable. If no exact property exists, existing wildcard expansion behavior is preserved.

Regression tests cover:

escaped literal property names such as Foo[]
exact property names such as Foo* taking precedence over wildcard expansion
-ExpandProperty with escaped literal property names

PR Checklist

PR has a meaningful title
Summarized changes
This PR is focused on one issue
Make sure all .h, .cpp, .cs, .ps1 and .psm1 files have the correct copyright header
This PR is ready to merge and is not work-in-progress
Breaking change: No
User-facing change: Not required
Tests added/updated

Validation

Start-PSBuild -NoPSModuleRestore -CI -SkipExperimentalFeatureGeneration -UseNuGetOrg
Direct repro with [WildcardPattern]::Escape('Foo[]') succeeds for both -Property and -ExpandProperty.
Start-PSPester -Path test/powershell/Modules/Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility/Select-Object.Tests.ps1 -UseNuGetOrg -ThrowOnFailure -Terse -SkipTestToolBuild

Result: Select-Object.Tests.ps1 passed: 54 passed, 0 failed.