Powershell: Output Redirection Issue - powershell

Question

I am currently writing a little script/program that will identify and sort certain files in a Windows directory. I am using the ls -n command to output a list of files to later be used by grep for Windows. However, using the following command:
ls -n >test.txt
leaves off the file extensions for file names in the output file. When I use ls -n inside the Powershell console (no output redirection), the file extensions are in the output.
Does anyone know what the issue is or how to do this properly with Powershell?

Answer 1

This works fine for me:
PS C:\Users\fission\Desktop\test> dir
Directory: C:\Users\fission\Desktop\test
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a--- 2011-06-19 3:22 PM 1250 capture.pcap
-a--- 2013-09-26 5:21 PM 154205 fail.pml
-a--- 2013-09-25 12:53 PM 1676383 hashfxn.exe
PS C:\Users\fission\Desktop\test> ls -n >test.txt
PS C:\Users\fission\Desktop\test> type test.txt
capture.pcap
fail.pml
hashfxn.exe
test.txt
As you can see, test.txt includes the extensions of the other files.
But may I make a suggestion? Piping text output to a file, then grepping it isn't very "idiomatic" in PowerShell. It's a bit counter to a central theme of PowerShell: one should pass objects, not text. You might consider working with the output of Get-ChildItem directly, eg by storing it in a variable, or piping it to Select-Object, etc.

Answer 2

Don't use aliases in scripts, because you can't depend upon them being set the same everywhere.
This will get you a listing of all files (and no directories) in the current directory, sort it alphabetically, and write it to test.txt.
Get-ChildItem |
where-object (!$_.PSIsContainer}|
select-object -expandproperty Name|
sort-object | out-file test.txt
If you're searching for strings within those files, you can use select-string instead of grep, to keep it completely within PowerShell.
Get-ChildItem |
where-object (!$_.PSIsContainer}|
select-string PATTERN