When you split texts, you typically lose the splitting character. That’s why the backslash in this example is lost:
PS> 'c:\test\file.txt' -split '\\' c: test file.txt
IMPORTANT: Note that the -split operator expects a regular expression. If you want to split at backslashes, since a backslash is a special character in regex, you need to escape it. The following call tells you what you need to escape: submit the literal text you want to use. The result is the escaped regex text:
PS> [regex]::Escape('\')
\\
If you want to split without losing anything, you can use so-called look-aheads and look-behinds. This splits *after* a backslash (without removing it):
PS> 'c:\test\file.txt' -split '(?<=\\)' c:\ test\ file.txt
And this splits *before* each backslash:
PS> 'c:\test\file.txt' -split '(?=\\)' c: \test \file.txt
