PowerShell copy to $null - powershell

Question

In Windows shell you can fetch the contents of a file and copy it to "\Device\Null" with a command like copy c:\filename NUL. (This is useful for recalling externally-archived files without wasting space or updating with touch.)
But I can't figure out how to do the same in PowerShell using $null, NUL, \\.\NUL and more (and I don't want to call out a separate CMD.EXE process to do this for every file).
PS C:\> Copy-Item -Path .\filename -Destination NUL
Copy-Item : Cannot process path 'C:\NUL' because the the target represents a reserved device name.
At line:1 char:10
+ Copy-Item <<<< -Path .\filename -Destination NUL
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (C:\NUL:String) [Copy-Item], IOException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CopyError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.CopyItemCommand
PS C:\> Copy-Item .\filename NUL
Copy-Item : Cannot process path 'C:\NUL' because the the target represents a reserved device name.
At line:1 char:10
+ Copy-Item <<<< .\filename NUL
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (C:\NUL:String) [Copy-Item], IOException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CopyError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.CopyItemCommand
PS C:\> copy .\filename '\\.\NUL'
Copy-Item : Cannot process path '\\.\NUL' because the the target represents a reserved device name.
At line:1 char:5
+ copy <<<< .\filename '\\.\NUL'
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (\\.\NUL:String) [Copy-Item], IOException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CopyError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.CopyItemCommand
Any other ideas how to do this?

Answer 1

Effectively, you just want to do a read on the file. If so, this will work:
Get-ChildItem .\filename | Get-Content | Out-Null
It's probably overkill though. You could try:
$File=[system.io.file]::OpenRead(".\filename")
$File.Close()
This just opens the file for reading (which may be enough to bring it back) and closes it again.