![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/wes-4-20-14-01.png\" "\\"Image")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn the previous image, I can see that there are many modules located in different folders. I decide to select the path to the modules and to use the Split-Path<\/b> cmdlet to view the parent folder. The first time I do it, the module folder itself returns. So I add an additional Split-Path<\/b> command, and now I can see how modules reside in the various module locations. This is shown here:<\/p>\n
PS C:\\> Get-Module -ListAvailable | select path | Split-Path -Parent | Split-Path –Parent |<\/p>\n
group -NoElement<\/p>\n
Count Name<\/p>\n
—– —-<\/p>\n
4 C:\\Users\\ed\\Documents\\…<\/p>\n
61 C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\Wi…<\/p>\n
1 C:\\Program Files\\Share…<\/p>\n
Most of the modules are in the default Windows PowerShell location. Only a few are in my Users location. One is in the strange SharePoint folder.<\/p>\n
Looking at a specific module<\/h2>\n
I decide I want to look at a specific module: the wdac<\/b> module. The first thing to do is to load the module. To do this, I use the Import-Module<\/b> cmdlet (ipmo<\/b> is the alias for this command). The command is shown here:<\/p>\n
Import-Module wdac<\/p>\n
Nothing returns when I import the module. But if I use the –Verbose<\/b> switch, I can see what the module does:<\/p>\n
When the module is imported, the Get-Module<\/b> cmdlet returns information about the wdac<\/b> module. The command is shown here:<\/p>\n Get-Module wdac<\/p>\n And here is the output from this command:<\/p>\n The output is not extremely interesting. It does tell me that there is a manifest and the module is version 1.0. But there is more information available. To see that information, I pipe the output to the Format-List<\/b> cmdlet (FL<\/b> is an alias that I could use for Format-List<\/b>):<\/p>\n Get-Module wdac | Format-List *<\/p>\n The command and the output from the command are shown in the image that follows:<\/p>\n There are some pretty interesting things available in the output. For instance, I can see the author of the module and the version of Windows PowerShell that is required. I see that the exported commands are functions, not cmdlets. I can list the functions by using dotted notation, as shown here:<\/p>\n PS C:\\> (gmo wdac).ExportedFunctions<\/p>\n Key Value<\/p>\n — —–<\/p>\n Add-OdbcDsn Add-OdbcDsn<\/p>\n Disable-OdbcPerfCounter Disable-OdbcPerfCounter<\/p>\n Disable-WdacBidTrace Disable-WdacBidTrace<\/p>\n Enable-OdbcPerfCounter Enable-OdbcPerfCounter<\/p>\n Enable-WdacBidTrace Enable-WdacBidTrace<\/p>\n Get-OdbcDriver Get-OdbcDriver<\/p>\n Get-OdbcDsn Get-OdbcDsn<\/p>\n Get-OdbcPerfCounter Get-OdbcPerfCounter<\/p>\n Get-WdacBidTrace Get-WdacBidTrace<\/p>\n Remove-OdbcDsn Remove-OdbcDsn<\/p>\n Set-OdbcDriver Set-OdbcDriver<\/p>\n Set-OdbcDsn Set-OdbcDsn<\/p>\n I also see that there is a format file. The path to the format file is:<\/p>\n PS C:\\> (gmo wdac).ExportedFormatFiles<\/p>\n C:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\Modules\\wdac\\Wdac.format.ps1xml<\/p>\n I can open that file in Notepad as shown here:<\/p>\n notepad (gmo wdac).ExportedFormatFiles<\/p>\n When the command runs, the following output appears:<\/p>\n Cool stuff. Take some time to explore other modules that may be interesting to you. Hey, it is the weekend (at least here in Charlotte, North Carolina), and weekends were made for Windows PowerShell exploration. Join me tomorrow when I kick off a poshpourri week.<\/p>\n I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to explore Windows PowerShell modules. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I really, really, really like about Windows PowerShell is the fact that it is self-discoverable. I mean, I can use Windows PowerShell to explore Windows PowerShell and to learn about Windows PowerShell. One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[51,3,4,61,45],"class_list":["post-1569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-getting-started","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to explore Windows PowerShell modules. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I really, really, really like about Windows PowerShell is the fact that it is self-discoverable. I mean, I can use Windows PowerShell to explore Windows PowerShell and to learn about Windows PowerShell. One of the […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\nWhat’s in the module<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n