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Select and List

Posted by: | September 23, 2013 | No Comment |

There are many times when I need to do something like this:

get-Whatever | select –first 1 | format-list –property *

Normally its because I need to discover the properties on an object and see some representative data at the same time. If I  just wanted the properties I could use Get-Member.

Getting tired of typing

select –first 1 | format-list –property *

Its a bit repetitive & boring I decided to look at a function to do this for me and ended up with this

function Select1FullList {
param (
[scriptblock]$scriptblock
)
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock $scriptblock |
Select-Object -First 1 |
Format-List -Property *
}

New-Alias -Name sfl -Value Select1FullList

I decided on a scriptblock as input because I wasn’t sure what I’d be wanting to see. For instance

Get-mailbox | Get-mailboxstatistics

could be be my input.

I also decided to use an alias as this is a command line tool for use while I’m writing code. My feelings on aliases in scripts still stand.

Still deciding if I need to add a computername parameter to give it remoting capabilities.

Any ways its going into my profile for now & we’ll see how it works out.

under: PowerShell Basics