Professional Windows® PowerShell

5.5. Preference Variables

You can control some aspects of PowerShell by using preference variables. A preference variable is a variable whose value allows you to express a preference about how PowerShell should behave in a specified situation. For example, the value of the $ErrorActionPreference variable allows you to specify how PowerShell should behave if an error is encountered.

To see the preference variables on your system, use all of the following commands:

getvariable:*preference*
getvariable:maximum*
getvariable:report*

Figure 5-19 shows the results of running the preceding commands.

Figure 5.19. Figure 5-19

As you can see in Figure 5-19, all preference variables and their current values can be displayed using simple commands. If, however, you want to see the value of a specified preference variable, simply type its name on the command line. For example, to see the current value of the $ErrorActionPreference variable, simply type

$ErrorActionPreference

on the command line. The value of the preference variable is then displayed.