Measure

Measure-Object is a common utility to calculate statistics of pipeline input with following usage:

First kind of measurement is for property.

• Average of property by -Average
• Sum of property by -Sum
• Max of property by -Maximun
• Min of property by -Minimum
• Standard Derivation of property by -StandardDerivation
• Measure all available statistics by -AllStats

Another kind of measurement is for string and string array.

• Line count of input by -Line
• Word count of input by -Word
• Character count of input by -Character

NOTE

Use measure alias for Measure-Object.

Calculate for Property

The usage can flexible depend on your need. -Property accepts a PSPropertyExpression which can be implicitly created from a property name, scriptblock or wildcard. Measure-Object will return a Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GenericMeasureInfo when calculate for property.

• Calculate for a same property by -Property and specify statistics options you need.

# Calculate sum and max for Length
gci | measure -Property Length -Sum -Max
# -Property is positional
gci | measure Length -Sum -Max

# measure different properties with same rule
gps | measure VM,ID -Sum -Max

# Calculate Max in unit GB
gci | measure { $_.Length / 1GB } -Max

TIP

You can always pass one or more valid PSPropertyExpression to -Property, it returns one or more GenericMeasureInfo

gci | measure Length, Name

Wildcard is a special case, all matched property will be calculated one by one. So it might return multiple GenericMeasureInfo.

# measures for properties like Name, FullName and so on.
# Compared as string
(gci | measure *ame -Max).Count # 5, multiple return!

Measure a HashTable PowerShell 6+

I think Extended property should be preferred if name conflict exists, haven't test it yet.

@{ Name = 'John'; Age = 18 }, @{ Name = 'Jane'; Age = 21 } | measure Age -Max

NOTE

-Maximun and -Minimum only requires the property to be comparable while other flags requires to be numeric.

NOTE

If no any flag were passed, measure only contains a available Count while other properties remain $null.

Calculate for String

The usage is pretty much the same as property. The only thing worth noting is string array still treated as a whole instead of enumerating over it. And each element is treated as single line. This is useful for the source being piped from Get-Content. Measurement for text returns Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.TextMeasureInfo.

('hello', 'world' | measure -Word -Line).Words # 2
('hello', 'world' | measure -Word -Line).Lines # 2