Windows PowerShell Nouns

Introduction to Windows PowerShell Nouns

In PowerShell, nouns always come after the verb.  For instance: Verb-Noun, Get-Process, New-Alias or Set-Location.  One advantage of researching a noun is that it can lead to other interesting cmdlets in the same family.

Noun Experiments

Experiment with these commands, just substitute the noun that you are interested in:

Get-Service)
Get-Service | Get-Member
Get-Help Service
#  NOT Get-Help | Get-Service)

Special note: the pipeline symbol displays as ¦ at the PowerShell command-line, but as | in notepad.

# To get a list of nouns for PowerShell v 2.0 try this:
Clear-Host
Get-Command -Noun

Note: There is a sister parameter -verb

Refine your list like so:

# To get a list of nouns for PowerShell v 2.0 try this:
Clear-Host
Get-Command -Noun Proc*

PowerShell Noun List

Acl  (Get-Acl)

Alias

Childitem (Get-Childitem has an Alias of dir)

Command (Get-Command)

Content (Get-Content machines.csv)

Drives

Env

Eventlog (not eventvwr)

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File (Out-file)

Item (Get-Item d:\scripts)

Object (Rare in that Get-object does not work, object used with where, new, group and sort, for example, new-object comobject and New-Object DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry. Also where-object)

Process

Property (Get-Property c:\boot.ini)

Provider

Service

WmiObject

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Summary of Windows PowerShell Nouns

Firstly, remember the sequence: Verb-Noun.  Secondly make a point of collecting PowerShell nouns.  Each construction begins with a verb then a hyphen, finally the Verb or object for example,  Get-Childitem.  However, because ‘get’ is the default PowerShell verb, it is sometimes omitted thus you see ‘Service’ rather than Get-Service.

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See more PowerShell examples for syntax advice

PowerShell Tutorials   • Syntax   • Get-Verb   • PowerShell Nouns   • Get-Credential

PowerShell -as   • Comparison operators  • Conditional operators   • Real-time Bandwidth Monitor

Get-Date  • Quotes   • Windows PowerShell   • PowerShell Version Check   • Get-Member

Please email me if you have a better example script. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.