Professional Windows® PowerShell

6.2. Common Parameters

Windows PowerShell supports six common parameters. As the name suggests, these parameters are available generally for use with all cmdlets.

The common parameters are:

• Debug — A boolean value that specifies whether or not debugging information is collected. Debugging information is displayed only if the cmdlet supports generation of debugging information.

• ErrorAction — Specifies behavior when an error is encountered. The allowed values are Continue (which is the default behavior), Stop, Silently Continue, and Inquire.

• ErrorVariable — Specifies the name of a variable that stores error information. The specified variable is populated in addition to $error.

• OutBuffer — Specifies the number of objects to buffer before calling the next cmdlet in the pipeline.

• OutVariable — Specifies a variable to store the output of a command or pipeline.

• Verbose — If this parameter is specified, then verbose output is generated, if the cmdlet supports verbose output. If the cmdlet does not support -verbose output, then the parameter has no effect.

Each of the common parameters has an abbreviation that you can use in its place, as shown in Table 6-1.

Ubiquitous Parameter	Abbreviation
-Debug	-db
-ErrorAction	-ea
-ErrorVariable	-ev
-OutputBuffer	-ob
-OutputVariable	-ov
-Verbose	-vb

If a cmdlet changes system state two other parameters are available:

• Confirm — The user is asked to confirm an action before it is carried out.

• WhatIf — The user is shown the actions that the system would have taken if ...