Sometimes, commands and methods do not return exactly what you are after. If you, for example, wanted to get the assigned IP addresses for a hostname, you could try this:
[System.Net.DNS]::GetHostByName('microsoft.com').AddressList
You do get the IP addresses, but they are part of a larger object. The result looks like this:
Address : 601041000 AddressFamily : InterNetwork ScopeId : IsIPv6Multicast : False IsIPv6LinkLocal : False IsIPv6SiteLocal : False IsIPv6Teredo : False IsIPv4MappedToIPv6 : False IPAddressToString : 104.40.211.35 (...) Address : 4223871848 AddressFamily : InterNetwork ScopeId : IsIPv6Multicast : False IsIPv6LinkLocal : False IsIPv6SiteLocal : False IsIPv6Teredo : False IsIPv4MappedToIPv6 : False IPAddressToString : 104.43.195.251
If you convert the output to a string, however, you get what you want:
[System.Net.DNS]::GetHostByName('microsoft.com').AddressList | ForEach-Object { "$_" }
Converting objects to strings can be a last resort if you can’t see another way of getting to the information you are after. The result now looks like this:
104.40.211.35 191.239.213.197 23.96.52.53 23.100.122.175 104.43.195.251
And here are the two power tips: if you get too much data from a command, identify the name of the information you are after, and add this with a “.”. So you can get to the IP addresses much more elegantly like this:
[System.Net.DNS]::GetHostByName('microsoft.com').AddressList.IPAddressToString
(The latter technique may require at least PowerShell 3.0, though).
If you must convert all elements to a string, rather than adding a cumbersome ForEach-Object loop, “abuse” the -replace operator like this:
[System.Net.DNS]::GetHostByName('microsoft.com').AddressList -replace ''
The operator does not replace anything. It just converts all incoming data into strings.
