PowerShell returning Length property on SELECT *

Question

I was trying to get all the string properties and methods. And instead of >"1,2,3,4,5,6" | Get-Member just out of curiosity I tried the following command and it gives me the Length property of String object. I thought it will give me error or no output. Any idea why it is doing this? Or How PowerShell interprets SELECT command?

    PS C:>"1,2,3,4,5,6" | SELECT * 

    Length  
    -----------

    11

Answer 1

Length is the only property of System.String the rest of the members are methods. You can see this by doing:

"1,2,3,4,5,6" | Get-Member

Select is an alias for Select-Object . Select-Object -Property * says list all properties and property values of the incoming object.

You can see all the members of System.String here and read up on the Select-Object cmdlet here .

Answer 2

This is easy to do when parsing text. You can use PSCX Get-TypeName to debug type issues from normal PowerShell session (can use breakpoints in ISE window).