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Very often you'll want to be selective in what you get

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from a PowerShell command or statement.

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That's where Select‑Object comes in.

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There are a few ways to use this command,

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including some advanced techniques that we won't get into in this course.

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The first way is to select the first or last X number of objects.

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So instead of getting all the files from c:\work, I'll only get the first three.

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You also have an option to skip a certain number of files before selecting.

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When used this way,

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Select‑Object passes the original object on in the pipeline to the next command,

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if there is one.

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The other way to use Select‑Object, and probably the more common way, is

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to select a subset of object properties. Like sorting and grouping, you

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can specify any property name that you see with Get‑Member. Separate

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multiple property names with commas.

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In this situation,

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Select‑Object creates a custom object on the fly based on the original

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object and only displays the properties that you specified.

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In this example, I won't see the full process object.

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Instead,

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I'll see a substitute object for each process that shows

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the process ID, name, and working set.

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Finally, there is Measure‑Object. Now the property parameter is positional,

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but I'm showing it here for the sake of clarity.

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Specify the property or properties that you want to

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measure. Again, separate properties by commas.

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As with the other commands we've looked at,

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you can use any property that you discover with Get‑Member. The property

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value, in this case though, must be a number. You then need to tell

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Measure‑Object what type of measurement to do,

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such as getting the sum of the file sizes that I'm doing here.

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You can also get values like the average, maximum, and minimum values.

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You'll specify these by parameters.

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When you read the help and examples for Measure‑Object,

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you'll also see that there is a less‑used option to

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count words and lines from a text file.

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Measure command writes a new type of object to the pipeline with your measurement results.