In the previous tip we illustrated how you can identify built-in PowerShell variables with an approach like this:
$ps = [PowerShell]::Create() $null = $ps.AddScript('$null=$host;Get-Variable') $ps.Invoke() $ps.Runspace.Close() $ps.Dispose()
Apparently, this code still misses some variables that aren’t created by the PowerShell core engine, but instead are added later by individual hosts, like powershell.exe, or the ISE. These missing variables need to be added manually. Fortunately, there aren’t many:
$ps = [PowerShell]::Create() $null = $ps.AddScript('$null=$host;Get-Variable') [System.Collections.ArrayList]$result = $ps.Invoke() | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name $ps.Runspace.Close() $ps.Dispose() # add host-specific variables $special = 'ps','psise','psunsupportedconsoleapplications', 'foreach', 'profile' $result.AddRange($special)
Now the code produces a complete list of reserved PowerShell variables, and in case we still missed some, simply add them to $special.
As a side note, the code nicely illustrates how [System.Collections.ArrayList] produces a better array. In contrast to regular arrays of type [Object[]], the ArrayList object has additional methods like AddRange() that can be used to quickly add a number of new elements.
