Adding space between paths in powershell

Question

I'm having a problem with my script that filters trough my logs and opens relevant ones in baretail. My problem at the moment is that some of the filepaths are printing without spaces in between and some have the space. I have been trying to get the spaces by putting + "" + but that does absolutely nothing.

picture of output

My code

$files = ""
[xml]$photonconfig = Get-Content 
C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\PhotonServer.config

$photonconfig.SelectNodes("Configuration/*")  | Select-Object -Expand Name | 
% {$_.replace("CriticalOps","")} | ForEach {
$files+= Write-Host ""
$files+= Get-ChildItem C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\log\log/*$_*.log |sort -property LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -first 3 


}

$clr= Get-ChildItem  C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\log\log/PhotonCLR.log | 
Select-Object 

$all = $files + $clr 

$all

Complete code:

 $files = @()
 [xml]$photonconfig = Get-Content 
 C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\PhotonServer.config

 $photonconfig.SelectNodes("Configuration/*")  | Select-Object -Expand Name | % {$_.replace("CriticalOps","")} | ForEach {
 $files+= Write-Output ""
 $files+= Get-ChildItem C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\log\log/*$_*.log |sort -property LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -first 3 


}

$clr= Get-ChildItem  C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\log\log/PhotonCLR.log | Select-Object 

$all = "$clr " + "$files" 

$cmd=Start-Process C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\baretail\baretail.exe $all

Answer 1

Take the following object types in consideration:

PS D:\PShell> (Get-ChildItem).GetType().FullName
System.Object[]

PS D:\PShell> (Get-ChildItem)[0].GetType().FullName
System.IO.DirectoryInfo

PS D:\PShell> (Get-ChildItem)[-1].GetType().FullName
System.IO.FileInfo

PS D:\PShell> "".GetType().FullName
System.String

PS D:\PShell> ( Write-Host "" ) -eq $null

True

Therefore, there comes some automatic type casting e.g. in $files+= Get-ChildItem …

1. Use array $files = @() instead of string $files = "".
2. Avoid using Write-Host at all.
3. Consider the difference between the two type casting approaches:
   • [xml]$photonconfig = Get-Content C:\…\Desktop\PhotonServer.config would strongly type the variable $photonconfig
   • $photonconfig = [xml]$( Get-Content C:\…\Desktop\PhotonServer.config ) (I'd prefer this variant)