Quick tip: finding a text string in PowerShell output

Assume you are working with a PowerShell prompt (say, an Exchange Management Shell), and you are not sure which commands are available. The PowerShell command "get-command" (or in case of Exchange, "get-excommand") gives you this list, but if you only know parts of the proper command name, then you might try to use a DOS classic, the "find" command. For instance, if you were to search for commands containing the word "Debug", you might try the following command:

get-command | find "Debug"

Unluckily though, PowerShell will simply response the following:

FIND: Parameter format not correct

The error will not go away even if you remove the quotation marks.

What could you try, then? One way to solve the problem is to change the command slightly: instead of "find", try "findstr" (for "find string"). This gives you the expected results:

PS C:\> get-command | findstr Debug
Cmdlet          Complete-Transaction           Complete-Transaction [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-Error...
Cmdlet          Debug-Process                  Debug-Process [-Name]  [-Verbose] [-De...
Cmdlet          Enable-PSRemoting              Enable-PSRemoting [-Force] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [...
Cmdlet          Exit-PSSession                 Exit-PSSession [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction...
Cmdlet          Get-Culture                    Get-Culture [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction ] [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-...
Cmdlet          Get-PSCallStack                Get-PSCallStack [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorActio...
Cmdlet          Get-Transaction                Get-Transaction [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorActio...
Cmdlet          Get-UICulture                  Get-UICulture [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorAction ...
Cmdlet          Get-WSManCredSSP               Get-WSManCredSSP [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorActi...
Function        prompt                         $(if (test-path variable:/PSDebugContext) { '[DB...
Cmdlet          Set-PSDebug                    Set-PSDebug [-Trace ] [-Step] [-Strict] [...
Cmdlet          Stop-Transcript                Stop-Transcript [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorActio...
Cmdlet          Undo-Transaction               Undo-Transaction [-Verbose] [-Debug] [-ErrorActi...
Cmdlet          Write-Debug                    Write-Debug [-Message]  [-Verbose] [-Deb...

With the "findstr" command, you can solve the problem of finding a string from the PowerShell output, which otherwise is object-based. But sometimes, a simple string search is what you are after.

If you instead prefer a more PowerShell-like style, then you could use something like this:

get-command | where {$_.definition -like "*Debug*"}

As you can see, the "findstr" command is more convenient.