PowerShell v3 in a Year Day 5 Get Item

After hitting two long about_ topics back to back (  and  ) I decided to randomly grab another: Get-Item. Get-Item is actually a useful cmdlet. Unlike Get-Content, which we will cover later, Get-Item, "Gets the item at the specified location." Ummm, okay. Clear as mud. Lets look at some examples to see perhaps what this really means. First, a file system grab (abbreviated for readability):

PS C:Userswsteele> Get-item .

    Directory: C:Users

Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name

----                -------------     ------ ----

d----         7/26/2012   3:13 PM            wsteele

PS C:Userswsteele> Get-item . | Get-Member

     TypeName: System.IO.DirectoryInfo

Name                      MemberType     Definition                                                                                

----                      ----------     ----------                                                                                

Mode                      CodeProperty   System.String Mode{get=Mode;}                                                             

Create                    Method         void Create(), void Create(System.Security.AccessControl.DirectorySecurity directorySec...

.

.

.                                                     

Root                      Property       System.IO.DirectoryInfo Root {get;}                                                       

BaseName                  ScriptProperty System.Object BaseName {get=$this.Name;}

As indicated by the  Get-Member cmdlet results it returns a System.IO.DirectoryInfo object. Ah, so, thats what it means. Comparing the two objects,  System.IO.Directory and  System.IO.DirectoryInfo helps clarify what  Get-item does. As noted at MSDN, Directory objects,

Exposes static methods for creating, moving, and enumerating through directories and subdirectories. This class cannot be inherited.

DirectoryInfo objects, on the other hand, 

Exposes instance methods for creating, moving, and enumerating through directories and subdirectories. This class cannot be inherited.

As a side note, it does the same thing with  FileInfo and File objects only, the File/FileInfo objects also "aids in the creation of FileStream objects".

In both cases, Get-Item is the focused on accessing the "info" object. Key here is instance, not, static. The consequence of this can be seen in the members returned on each object. Taking the same example above, I look at my directory as an Directory object and a DirectoryInfo object.

Approach 1: DirectoryInfo:

[System.IO.DirectoryInfo]C:userswsteele |gm | ft name, membertype-AutoSize

Name                          MemberType

----                          ----------

Mode                        CodeProperty

Create                            Method

CreateObjRef                      Method

CreateSubdirectory                Method

Delete                            Method

EnumerateDirectories              Method

EnumerateFiles                    Method

EnumerateFileSystemInfos          Method

Equals                            Method

GetAccessControl                  Method

GetDirectories                    Method

GetFiles                          Method

GetFileSystemInfos                Method

GetHashCode                       Method

GetLifetimeService                Method

GetObjectData                     Method

GetType                           Method

InitializeLifetimeService         Method

MoveTo                            Method

Refresh                           Method

SetAccessControl                  Method

ToString                          Method

Attributes                      Property

CreationTime                    Property

CreationTimeUtc                 Property

Exists                          Property

Extension                       Property

FullName                        Property

LastAccessTime                  Property

LastAccessTimeUtc               Property

LastWriteTime                   Property

LastWriteTimeUtc                Property

Name                            Property

Parent                          Property

Root                

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