Select-Object for properties in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Select-Object for properties

📖 Scenario: You are working with a list of files in a folder. Each file has many details like name, length, creation time, and more. You want to see only the file names and their sizes to keep things simple.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that gets files from a folder and shows only the Name and Length properties using Select-Object.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable called files that stores the list of files from the current directory using Get-ChildItem.

Create a variable called properties that holds the list of properties Name and Length.

Use Select-Object with the properties variable to select only those properties from files and store the result in selectedFiles.

Print the selectedFiles variable to show the output.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

When managing files on your computer, you often want to see only important details like file names and sizes instead of all information.

💼 Career

IT professionals and system administrators use PowerShell scripts like this to quickly gather and report file information for maintenance and audits.

1

Get the list of files

Create a variable called files and set it to the result of Get-ChildItem to get all files in the current directory.

PowerShell

# Create a variable called files with Get-ChildItem
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Get-ChildItem to get files and assign it to files.

2

Create a properties list

Create a variable called properties and set it to an array containing the strings 'Name' and 'Length'.

PowerShell

$files = Get-ChildItem
# Create a variable called properties with 'Name' and 'Length'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use @('Name', 'Length') to create an array of property names.

3

Select only the needed properties

Use Select-Object with the properties variable to select only the Name and Length properties from files. Store the result in a variable called selectedFiles.

PowerShell

$files = Get-ChildItem
$properties = @('Name', 'Length')
# Use Select-Object with properties to create selectedFiles
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the pipeline | to send files to Select-Object with -Property $properties.

4

Display the selected properties

Print the selectedFiles variable to show the file names and sizes.

PowerShell

$files = Get-ChildItem
$properties = @('Name', 'Length')
$selectedFiles = $files | Select-Object -Property $properties
# Print selectedFiles
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Simply write the variable name selectedFiles to print its content.