PowerShell Variables in PowerShell Reading a CmdLet Output
Example
By Default, powershell would return the output to the calling Entity. Consider Below Example,
Get-Process -Name excel
This would simply, return the running process which matches the name excel, to the calling entity. In this case, the PowerShell Host. It prints something like,
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id SI ProcessName
------- ------ ----- ----- ----- ------ -- -- -----------
1037 54 67632 62544 617 5.23 4544 1 EXCEL
Now if you assign the output to a variable, it simply wont print anything. And of course the variable holds the output. (Be it a string, Object - Any type for that matter)
$allExcel = Get-Process -Name excel
So, lets say you have a scenario where you want to assign a variable by a Dynamic name, you can use the -OutVariable parameter
Get-Process -Name excel -OutVariable AllRunningExcel
Note that the '$' is missing here. A major difference between these two assignments is that, it also prints the output apart from assigning it to the variable AllRunningExcel. You can also choose to assign it to an another variable.
$VarOne = Get-Process -Name excel -OutVariable VarTwo
Albeit, the above scenario is very rare, both variables $VarOne & $VarTwo will have the same value.
Now consider this,
Get-Process -Name EXCEL -OutVariable MSOFFICE
Get-Process -Name WINWORD -OutVariable +MSOFFICE
The first statement would simply get excel process & assign it to MSOFFICE variable, and next would get ms word processes running and "Append" it to the existing value of MSOFFICE. It would look something like this,
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id SI ProcessName
------- ------ ----- ----- ----- ------ -- -- -----------
1047 54 67720 64448 618 5.70 4544 1 EXCEL
1172 70 50052 81780 584 1.83 14968 1 WINWORD
