Why PSObject is hidden?

PowerShell Help
1

Hi Guys,
Could some one please reveal the secret why $XXX.PSOBJECT is hidden (.PSObject)? What hidden I mean is, I cannot find this in intelligence. To be honest until Don Jones said about in one of my previous posts !!

Do we have any more such hidden ones ( i don’t know technically what PSObject is called)? If so how to self explore and know about this?

2

Are you asking about the output of Get-Member? You can display that information by using the -Force switch on that cmdlet. I assume that they’re hidden by default simply because they exist on every single object in PowerShell, and would clutter up the output. (They’re also rarely needed from inside a PowerShell script.)

The Get-Member help file has this to say about the -Force switch: “Adds the intrinsic members (PSBase, PSAdapted, PSObject, PSTypeNames) and the compiler-generated get_ and set_ methods to the display. By default, Get-Member gets these properties in all views other than “Base” and “Adapted,” but it does not display them.”

3

WOW. Fantastic. Thanks a lot Wyatt. I was not aware of " | gm -force"
Now I am relaxed, because its proved that Microsoft is not hiding anything (in PS) and which can be explored only by programmers or like you or Don or Jeff…etc.

My ego satisfied :-p

4

The only time I’ve use PSObject is to enumerate the Name (attribute\column name) and Value…

$processes = Get-Process | Select Name, Company, WS -First 3

$processes | foreach {
    $_.PSObject.Properties | foreach {
        "ColumnName: {0}" -f $_.Name
        "ColumnValue: {0}" -f $_.Value
    }

}

Output:

ColumnName: Name
ColumnValue: agent
ColumnName: Company
ColumnValue: 
ColumnName: WS
ColumnValue: 6688768
ColumnName: Name
ColumnValue: armsvc
ColumnName: Company
ColumnValue: 
ColumnName: WS
ColumnValue: 1708032
ColumnName: Name
ColumnValue: chrome
ColumnName: Company
ColumnValue: Google Inc.
ColumnName: WS
ColumnValue: 28418048
5

It’s sometimes handy to make code compatible with StrictMode (where trying to access a non-existent property on an object will produce an error.) So I use $object.PSObject.Properties[‘PropertyName’] in order to check whether the property exists.