Topic: Less Used Variable Properties
Notice: This post is a part of the PowerShell Monday series — a group of quick and easy to read mini lessons that briefly cover beginning and intermediate PowerShell topics. As a PowerShell enthusiast, this seemed like a beneficial way to ensure those around me at work were consistently learning new things about Windows PowerShell. At some point, I decided I would share these posts here, as well. Here’s the PowerShell Monday Table of Contents.
When someone sets, or assigns, a variable in Windows PowerShell, we typically expect it to look a certain way, as is demonstrated below. This example also shows how we typically return a variable’s value, after it’s been assigned.
$String = 'Welcome back to Monday.' # Assign a value to variable. $String # Return a variable’s value. Welcome back to Monday.
This assigns, or sets, the variable named string, the value of ‘Welcome back to Monday.’ Straightforward, right? Well, this isn’t the only way to assign a variable in PowerShell. There’s a more formal process that offers a few extra options. When we use the *-Variable cmdlets, we don’t use the dollar sign ($). The dollar sign is only used to indicate to the PowerShell parser that what follows it, will be a variable name. The difference here is that these variable cmdlets already know you’re providing a variable name.
New-Variable -Name String2 -Value 'Come on, Friday.' Get-Variable -Name String2 Name Value ---- ----- String2 Come on, Friday.
If you choose to use the Get-Variable cmdlet to return just the value, you can use the -ValueOnly parameter, dotted-notation, or Select-Object’s -ExpandProperty parameter. In older versions of PowerShell, dotted-notation may not be an option.
Get-Variable -Name String2 -ValueOnly (Get-Variable -Name String2).Value Get-Variable -Name String2 | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Value Come on, Friday. Come on, Friday. Come on, Friday.
I’m not here to suggest variables should always be created with New-Variable, that values should always be returned with Get-Variable, that variables should always be updated with Set-Variable, or even that we should always clear or remove variables with Clear-Variable and Remove-Variable, respectively. What I’m out to do, is tell you about a couple extra properties that are attached to our variables, that you might not know about, and how we might use them.
Let’s modify the command we used to return the value of our $String2 variable, so we return all the properties. Keep in mind, that we can do the same thing with our $String variable that was created without the New-Variable cmdlet.
Get-Variable -Name String2 | Select-Object *
Name : String2
Description :
Value : Come on Friday.
Visibility : Public
Module :
ModuleName :
Options : None
Attributes : {}
Notice that we have a Description property and an Options property. The Description property is another way to provide additional meaning to a variable. While you should strive to name your variables in a way that describes their contents, if you’re feeling up to it, you can add additional information about the variable in this property.
Set-Variable -Name String2 -Description 'Demo purposes only' (Get-Variable -Name String2).Description Demo purposes only
Let’s talk about the Options property next week, as it’s a bit more useful.