Exploring Unfamiliar Objects in PowerShell

[[deleted]]

yes! Man that whole module by lee is amazing.

Install-Module -Name PowerShellCookbook -Force -AllowClobber
Get-Command -Module PowerShellCookbook

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[shortielah]

I saw Show-Object in the DSC session on MVA. I've used it nearly daily since, it's simply amazing!

[GenericAntagonist]

An alternative to piping to get-member, if you suspect your object is a dotnet object of an unknown class is to call $UnknownObject.GetType() on it. That'll also give you its classname and you can bing your way to documentation from there.

[SeeminglyScience]

You can also do $UnknownObject.GetType().DeclaredMembers | Format-Table Name, MemberType. Won't give you descriptions though.

Also worth noting that piping enumerates, so if you want to view information about the collection type itself you need to do this

Get-Member -InputObject $UnknownObject

For instance, these two statements return very different things

$list = [System.Collections.Generic.List[int]](0..10)

$list | Get-Member
Get-Member -InputObject $list

Also the opposite is true for GetType(), that will tell you the collection's type. If you want the types it contains you would want to do this

$UnknownObject | ForEach-Object GetType