Microsoft® Windows PowerShell™ Step By Step

Understanding the Variable Provider

The variable provider provides access to the variables that are defined within WindowsPowerShell. These variables include both user-defined variables, such as $mred, and system-defined variables, such as $host. You can obtain a listing of the cmdlets designed to work specifically with variables by using the Get-Help cmdlet and specifying the asterisk (*) variable. The commands used in the procedure are in the UnderstandingTheVariableProvider.txt and WorkingWithVariables.txt files. To return only cmdlets, we use the Where-Object cmdlet and filter on the category that is equal to cmdlet. This command is shown here:

Get-Help *variable | Where-Object {$_.category -eq "ÒcmdletÓ"}

The resulting list contains five cmdlets ...