Object Members

Member Inspection

Inspect from Pipeline

Get-Member can insepct objects from a pipeline input, which means by iterating them one by one.

TIP

Use gm alias for Get-Member.

Only members from a unique type in that pipeline input enumeration will be collected as the result.

(gci -file | select -first 1 | gm).Length # 53
(gci -dir | select -first 1 | gm).Length # 47
# assuming current directory has both directory and file
(gci | gm).Length # 53 + 47 = 100

The whole array returned from Get-Member is object[], each item inside is a MemberDefinition

(gci | gm) -is [object[]] # True
(gci | gm | select -first 1) -is [MemberDefinition] # True

Inspect from Object

To treat a whole collection as the object to be inspected, do not pipe it, pass it to -InputObject instead. Or magically wrap it as a single-item collection.

gm -InputObject (gci -file) # TypeName: System.Object[]
,(gci -file) | gm

Member Types