WEBVTT

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>> Hello everyone. I'm
instructor Gerri Roberts,

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and this is
PowerShell scripting.

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In this lesson, we're
going to learn about

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piping commands and
piping output to a file.

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We learned a little bit about

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>> piping in our help lesson.

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>> In this lesson we're
going to go further into it.

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First of all, Piping Commands,

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there are a couple of
very useful commands

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that you can pipe that
you really should know,

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Where-object, format-List or FL,

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format Table or FT,
and measure-object.

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Where-object, this is

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the first cmdlet that will
be very useful for you.

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Allows you to specify certain
conditions that must be

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met for the command
in order to run.

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For example, here we
have a get-service,

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where-object, property
status equals stopped.

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What this will do is it'll
get the current services,

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then filter them based
on their status.

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This one says status
equals stopped,

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it's going to look for
that where it says

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stopped and it's going to show

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all the ones that are stopped.

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Now, one thing to
notice is the -eq.

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Usually you want to do -eq and

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seven-equals sign
when you're trying to

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say that something equals

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something in a
PowerShell command.

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Format-List is the
next useful command.

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Format-Lists allows you to
format the output in a list,

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for example here we have
get w my on object when

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3200 sewer processor and

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we have formatted
the list using FL.

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You can use Format-List or
you can type in just FL,

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either works in PowerShell.

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Now, this particular command
is going to look for

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some processor information
then displayed as a list.

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As you can see here
in the picture,

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we have different pieces of
information like caption,

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which is usually just some basic

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information about the item,

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device ID, manufacturer,
and so forth.

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Because it's in a list,

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is a little bit easier to

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read than it would
be in a table.

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Now, there are other parameters
that can be used with

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Format-List to further
organize the list.

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However, that's beyond what

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>> we're going to be doing here.

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>> But that is something to be

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aware of that you
can look for later.

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Another formatting option
is Format-table or FT.

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Format-table allows
you to format

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your output as a
table, for example,

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here we have get process
and FT. You can see

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here it is now a table

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and each table has
a heading here,

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so like handles and PM, PM, Ws,

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all that has its own column,

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and each row is a different
piece of information.

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Now, Format-table also has

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some additional parameters for

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further organization
that you can use.

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Again, those are
beyond this video,

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but that is something
that you could look into.

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Other thing with Format-table

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just like Format-List if you

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do FT instead of the
full Format-table,

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that will also work.

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Measure-object is a another
very useful command.

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This command allows you
to find metadata or

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certain pieces of information

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about an object, such as a file.

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For example, here we have

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>> a command get
child item path,

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>> the path of the file,
then measure object.

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What this actually
did was it went

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through and it found the C
Windows system 32 directory.

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Then it got all the child items,

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which are all the items

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that are actually just
listed in that folder.

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Then provided information.

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Here it's very simple.

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It just gave you account of

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how many items in

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this particular folder on
this particular computer,

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it looks like
there's 4,490 items.

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You'll also see some other
items like average son,

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maximum, minimum property,
stuff like that,

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that using in yet there
are additional parameters

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just like with format table and

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format list that you can use
to find more information.

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One of the very
useful ones is -word,

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-word gets word count.

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That's pretty cool if you're
working on a file like

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a Word file or another
type of document,

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you can actually get word count

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>> without opening the file.

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>> Another item,

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you're going to want to
know what piping is,

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how to pipe output to a file.

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In addition to actually being
able to pipe in commands,

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you can actually pipe
your output to a file.

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This is very useful for
commands to get information,

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such as the CIM instance item.

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This one shows when 32BIOS,

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which is bios information.

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What you can do is you can run

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the commands as a
script and create

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files so you have all pieces of

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information about
what you need to get.

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To pipe output to a file,

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use the greater than
symbol twice at

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the end of your command and

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specify the file to pipe it to.

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For example, here,

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we have our 32Bios and we want

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to actually put that to

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a text document so we
have it for later.

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What we've done is we've
done our commands,

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so get-CIM instance -class name

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Win32_bios and then our
pipe, then space FL.

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We're actually going
to format it as

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a list before we put
it in the document.

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Then we did our two greater
than symbols BIOS.text,

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that's the name of the
file we're sending it to.

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There, you can actually
put an entire file path.

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The file does not
have to be created.

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It will create one for you,

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if you have not created it yet.

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Once that command runs,

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and it's going to pipe
that bios information

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into a text file called bios.

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You do see there in
the screenshot that

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it pipe the output
into a file for you.

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Now, post-assessment
question time.

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If you wanted to pipe output to

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a file called random.txt,

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which is a text file,

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which command would you use?

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Would you pipe random.txt?

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Would you greater
than random.txt?

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Would you do two greater
than random.txt?

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Or would you do a
less than random.txt?

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Now, you may pause for
a moment if you want,

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and we'll get the
answer in a second.

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The answer is C. You would use

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the double greater
than random.txt.

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Remember, you have to
use the double greater

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than when piping
output to a file.