Looking for insight #1

[MNtobar]

Using PS 5.1

Still a PowerShell newb.

I have been trying to use the PowerShell documentation to answer my questions. Some success, many failures. 

One such failure was figuring out what "-EA 0" meant to the remove-variable cmdlet. There was nothing under the official(???) PowerShell documentation remove-variable in 7.2 or 5.1. I found get-alias, but EA was not mentioned in the output. (I found the meaning in a entry at the Microsoft devblogs).

What I would like to know is if there is a secret decoder ring for finding out these "officially undocumented" entries? Something other than "do an internet search".

Thanks.

[#2]

@MNtobar 

Discovering some of these things is simply a case of pot luck - unless you're willing to sit down and progressively read the documentation on docs.microsoft.com.

Most of the "interesting" articles are the ones from the online help, but a bit easier to navigate since it's all laid out for you, ala the one about common parameters (for which EA is shorthand for the ErrorAction common parameter.)

• about CommonParameters - PowerShell | Microsoft Docs

Although you've already found the answer, "-EA 0" translates to "-ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue".

I personally have beef with rampant shorthand unless you're doing basic ad hoc work from the command line that nobody else will ever read.

I feel that anything longer-lasting should be self-evident and self-documenting, but then I'm also an old geezer, so your mileage with others will vary.

Cheers,

Lain

[#3]

Actually, it's crude, but you can actually dynamically pull a list of parameters and any aliases defined for them:

Get-Command -Name "Remove-Variable" | ForEach-Object { $_.Parameters.GetEnumerator() | ForEach-Object { $_.Value }| Select-Object -Property Name, Aliases }

You'd just change the name of the commandlet to whatever it is you're keen to look up the parameters for.

Cheers,

Lain

[#4]

Thanks for the "crude". I don't suppose there is an alias for it??? ;-). :-P(I guess I could create my own.)

Being "old geezer" myself I agree. I find it slightly amusing that they created this very verbose language, which is great for self-documenting, but then got tired of all the typing so made alias a possibility. I am still on the "why is this so complicated" side of the learning curve, but I kind of get it. I am not good at typing, so I will never be a fan of PowerShell purity. I long for my days of UNIX. "cd, cat, ls, yacc, awk, …". (And I get the irony of how confusing things can be when you don't know what they mean. :)