What do the headers in the PowerShell ps output mean

command linepowershell

If I type ps in PowerShell, I obtain something like:

Handles  NPM(K)    PM(K)      WS(K) VM(M)   CPU(s)     Id ProcessName          
-------  ------    -----      ----- -----   ------     -- -----------          
     45       2      524       1812    12             376 AEstSrv              
     40       2      624       2028    13             484 agrsmsvc             
    137       5     1540       4760    50            1568 atieclxx             
    123       4      996       3196    27             920 atiesrxx             
    122       5    15584      14688    46            4816 audiodg              
    138       5     1536       4808    55            6132 audiosrv

Can someone give me the definitions of the various headers here?

Best Answer

If you type

get-help get-process -full

You will get an explanation of these terms. Here it is:

The default display of a process is a table that includes the following columns:

-- Handles: The number of handles that the process has opened.

-- NPM(K): The amount of non-paged memory that the process is using, in kilobytes.

-- PM(K): The amount of pageable memory that the process is using, in kilobytes.

-- WS(K): The size of the working set of the process, in kilobytes. The working set consists of the pages of memory that were recently referenced by the process.

-- VM(M): The amount of virtual memory that the process is using, in megabytes. Virtual memory includes storage in the paging files on disk.

-- CPU(s): The amount of processor time that the process has used on all processors, in seconds.

-- ID: The process ID (PID) of the process.

-- ProcessName: The name of the process.

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Powershell get a value from ‘query user’ and not the headers etc

Since "query user" is not an object you cannot use it as an object in powershell unless you contruct a custom PSObject, so

$IDValue = query user | Select-Object ID
will not work.

I would use something like this:

$users = query user ;
$IDs = @() ;

for ($i=1; $i -lt $users.Count;$i++) {
  # using regex to find the IDs
  $temp = [string]($users[$i] | Select-String -pattern "\s\d+\s").Matches ;
  $temp = $temp.Trim() ;
  $IDs += $temp ;
}

PowerShell Commands – Difference Between @powershell and powershell

The most recognizable instance of this is probably @echo off at the beginning of batch files (since DOS).

@ turns off console echo of that command. You see it in @echo off all the time because if you don't use it, you'll see the actual command echo off in the console display when the batch is run. Which is counter-productive when you're trying to control what's displayed/echoed in your batch script. :)

Having said that, I'm not sure why the Chocolaty website says to use it in that (non-batch) context.

Here's Microsoft's TechNet article on Echo, which explains the @:

If you want to turn echo off and you do not want to echo the echo command, type an at sign (@) before the command as follows:

@echo off

Turns out someone asked about this a year ago on StackOverflow as well:

What is the at sign (@) in a batch file and what does it do?

Best Answer

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Powershell get a value from ‘query user’ and not the headers etc

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