Tee-Object cmdlet
How often do you use the Tee-Object cmdlet? If you are anything like me I would guess fairly infrequently – if at all. It does deserve to be considered.
Think of running Get-Process. We get a nice display on screen. We may decide to save the output
Get-Process | Out-File c:\test\proc1.txt
but now we don’t see the output. Its in the file so we can look at it
Get-Content c:\test\proc1.txt
but that now becomes a two step process.
Tee-Object supplies the answer because it functions as a “T” junction and effectively splits the data
Get-Process | Tee-Object -FilePath c:\test\proc2.txt
gives us a display on screen (because Tee-Object ends the pipeline) and a file output – test with Get-Content c:\test\proc2.txt
We can add further processing after the Tee
Get-Process | Tee-Object -FilePath c:\test\proc2.txt | where {$_.Name -like "p*"} | Format-Table
Instead of a file we can tee to a variable
Get-Process | Tee-Object -Variable procs
Notice that we don’t use a $ in front of the variable name!!
$procs
will display the data again
If we look at the type of the data
$procs | gm
We see that its TypeName: System.Diagnostics.Process which means we can perform all our usual PowerShell processing e.g.
Unfortunately there isn’t a way to append data to file with Tee-Object but it does have a very practical purpose and deserves a bit more attention.