Have you ever heard about PowerShell Accelerators?

It is what makes it easy to handle stuff like XML files, WMI Objects or Active Directory Objects.

We use it for pre-defining variable and calculations types too.

 

for example we can read a XML file using [xml] and get-content

PS C:\> $xml = [xml] (Get-Content myXMLFile.xml)

by using this method we are able to parse the XML into real PS objects, and therefore we can acess the parts by using the dot net way.

PS C:\> $xml.Config.ServerName

 

This will read the ServerName Tag inside the Config tag.

Problem is that there is a lot of these, and no official complete list.

One of the reasons is that, new accelerators might become available, when you import modules.

But by using these few lines of code you will get the complete list of available accelerators:

$acceleratorsType = [type]::gettype("System.Management.Automation.TypeAccelerators")
$acceleratorsType::Add("accelerators", $acceleratorsType)
[accelerators]::Get

On my windows 7 PC I have the following list (no extra modules is loaded)

Key                                     Value

—                                     —–

int                                     System.Int32

long                                    System.Int64

string                                  System.String

char                                    System.Char

bool                                    System.Boolean

byte                                    System.Byte

double                                  System.Double

decimal                                 System.Decimal

float                                   System.Single

single                                  System.Single

regex                                   System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex

array                                   System.Array

xml                                     System.Xml.XmlDocument

scriptblock                             System.Management.Automation.ScriptB…

switch                                  System.Management.Automation.SwitchP…

hashtable                               System.Collections.Hashtable

type                                    System.Type

ref                                     System.Management.Automation.PSRefer…

psobject                                System.Management.Automation.PSObject

pscustomobject                          System.Management.Automation.PSObject

psmoduleinfo                            System.Management.Automation.PSModul…

powershell                              System.Management.Automation.PowerShell

runspacefactory                         System.Management.Automation.Runspac…

runspace                                System.Management.Automation.Runspac…

ipaddress                               System.Net.IPAddress

wmi                                     System.Management.ManagementObject

wmisearcher                             System.Management.ManagementObjectSe…

wmiclass                                System.Management.ManagementClass

adsi                                    System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry

adsisearcher                            System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySe…

psprimitivedictionary                   System.Management.Automation.PSPrimi…

accelerators                            System.Management.Automation.TypeAcc…

As you can see , there is a lot of them!

you can even create your own. Read this blog post

On of the cooler ones is [adsisearcher].

All it need is a AD query as input I you will have the result in the variable.

Actually if you are familiar with .net programming, you know that types in .net is named fx:

[System.Net.NetworkInformation.IPStatus]

 

Thanks to the great forum reply about this subject, you can read it here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1145312/where-can-i-find-a-list-of-powershell-net-type-accelerators