As some know, I’m working on a book. The subject involves working with over 120 PowerShell cmdlets. Many of these cmdlets have help files that are incomplete, so I have been blazing some pretty new territory. I constantly have to look up the parameters for these cmdlets so that I can be sure that what I’m writing is accurate. Rather than view the detailed help (which might not even be helpful), I wrote a script to pull out the parameters into a list. The script was embarrassing, really, but it was a quick hack that I needed and it worked. Then, just the other day while browsing the VMware Community forums, another user who goes by the name LucD spouted a snippet of code that for some reason I had not happened upon before. It was a much better way to do what I had been doing with my previous Get-Parameter function. I took his technique and added some BSonPosh-style custom object goodness and a few other features and hark! The script is ready for all to see. 
function Get-Parameter ($Cmdlet) {
foreach ($paramset in (Get-Command $Cmdlet).ParameterSets){
$Output = @()
foreach ($param in $paramset.Parameters) {
$process = "" | Select-Object Name, ParameterSet, Aliases, IsMandatory, CommonParameter
$process.Name = $param.Name
if ( $paramset.name -eq "__AllParameterSets" ) { $process.ParameterSet = "Default" }
else { $process.ParameterSet = $paramset.Name }
$process.Aliases = $param.aliases
$process.IsMandatory = $param.IsMandatory
if ($param.aliases -match "vb|db|ea|wa|ev|wv|ov|ob") { $process.CommonParameter = $TRUE }
else { $process.CommonParameter = $FALSE }
$output += $process
}
Write-Output $Output
Write-Host "`n"
}
}
As input it takes a single cmdlet name. The output looks like the below. Note the blank line, that’s to help separate when you have multiple ParameterSets. I added a CommonParameter field so that you could filter out the boring stuff if you want.
PS > Get-Parameter New-Runspace | ft
Name ParameterSet Aliases IsMandatory CommonParameter
---- ------------ ------- ----------- ---------------
ComputerName ComputerName {Cp} False False
Authentication ComputerName {} False False
Credential ComputerName {} False False
Port ComputerName {} False False
UseSSL ComputerName {} False False
Shell ComputerName {} False False
ApplicationName ComputerName {} False False
ThrottleLimit ComputerName {} False False
Verbose ComputerName {vb} False True
Debug ComputerName {db} False True
ErrorAction ComputerName {ea} False True
WarningAction ComputerName {wa} False True
ErrorVariable ComputerName {ev} False True
WarningVariable ComputerName {wv} False True
OutVariable ComputerName {ov} False True
OutBuffer ComputerName {ob} False True
Authentication Uri {} False False
Credential Uri {} False False
Shell Uri {} False False
ThrottleLimit Uri {} False False
ConnectionUri Uri {URI, CU} False False
Verbose Uri {vb} False True
Debug Uri {db} False True
ErrorAction Uri {ea} False True
WarningAction Uri {wa} False True
ErrorVariable Uri {ev} False True
WarningVariable Uri {wv} False True
OutVariable Uri {ov} False True
OutBuffer Uri {ob} False True
Runspace Runspace {RunspaceInfo} False False
ThrottleLimit Runspace {} False False
Verbose Runspace {vb} False True
Debug Runspace {db} False True
ErrorAction Runspace {ea} False True
WarningAction Runspace {wa} False True
ErrorVariable Runspace {ev} False True
WarningVariable Runspace {wv} False True
OutVariable Runspace {ov} False True
OutBuffer Runspace {ob} False True
file attachment: get-parameter.ps1
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