Store a cmdlet's result value in a variable in Powershell

Question

I would like to run a cmdlet and store the result's value in a variable.

For example

C:\PS>Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select Priority

It lists priorities with a header. The first one for example:

Priority
--------
8

How can i store them in a variable? I've tried:

$var=Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select Priority

Now the variable is: @{Priority=8} and I wanted it to be 8.

Question 2:

Can I store two variables with one cmdlet? I mean store it after the pipeline.

C:\PS>Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select Priority, ProcessID

I would like to avoid this:

$prio=Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select Priority
$pid=Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select ProcessID

Answer 1

Use the -ExpandProperty flag of Select-Object

$var=Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select -expand Priority

Update to answer the other question:

Note that you can as well just access the property:

$var=(Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process).Priority

So to get multiple of these into variables:

$var=Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process
   $prio = $var.Priority
   $pid = $var.ProcessID

Answer 2

Just access the Priority property of the object returned from the pipeline:

$var = (Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process).Priority

(This won't work if Get-WSManInstance returns multiple objects.²)

For the second question: to get two properties there are several options, problably the simplest is to have have one variable* containing an object with two separate properties:

$var = (Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select -first 1 Priority, ProcessID)

and then use, assuming only one process:

$var.Priority

and

$var.ProcessID

If there are multiple processes $var will be an array which you can index, so to get the properties of the first process (using the array literal syntax @(...) so it is always a collection¹):

$var = @(Get-WSManInstance -enumerate wmicimv2/win32_process | select -first 1 Priority, ProcessID)

and then use:

$var[0].Priority
$var[0].ProcessID

¹ PowerShell helpfully for the command line, but not so helpfully in scripts has some extra logic when assigning the result of a pipeline to a variable: if no objects are returned then set $null, if one is returned then that object is assigned, otherwise an array is assigned. Forcing an array returns an array with zero, one or more (respectively) elements.

² This changes in PowerShell V3 (at the time of writing in Release Candidate), using a member property on an array of objects will return an array of the value of those properties.