Vista - Silly question from a newbie!

I'm trying to get to grips with PowerShell and so I'm experimenting with
various bits and pieces. In the process, I do this:

help get-*

which, as I would expect, gives me the synopsis help for all of the commands
that start with "get-". So far, so good. Trouble is, the names aren't in any
particular order so I try piping it to sort:

help get-* | sort -property name

but the sort order doesn't change.

Have I overlooked something obvious?

TIA.

--Philip

"help" is a function, in "help get-* | sort -property name" , there are no
input objects for sort to work on.
PS C:\monad> get-command help -type function -us
param([string]$help); Get-Help $help | Out-Host -paging

Try this:
PS C:\monad> get-help get-* | sort -property name |Out-Host -paging

Name Category
Synopsis
---- --------
--------
Get-Acl Command
Gets the access control list (ACL) associated ...
Get-Alias Command
Returns alias names for Cmdlets
Get-AuthenticodeSignature Command
Gets the signature object associated with a file.
Get-ChildItem Command
Retrieves the child items of the specified loc...
Get-Command Command
Retrieves basic information about a command.
Get-Content Command
The get-content command gets the content from ...
Get-Credential Command
Gets a credential object based on a password
Get-Culture Command
Gets the culture information.
Get-Date Command
Gets current date and time.
Get-EventLog Command
Gets eventlog data for the machine.
Get-ExecutionPolicy Command
Gets the effective execution policy for the cu...
....
--
Wei Wu [MSFT]
Windows PowerShell Team
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Philip Colmer" <pcolmer@nospam.nospam> wrote in message
news:%230DviyglGHA.5044@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> I'm trying to get to grips with PowerShell and so I'm experimenting with
> various bits and pieces. In the process, I do this:
>
> help get-*
>
> which, as I would expect, gives me the synopsis help for all of the
> commands that start with "get-". So far, so good. Trouble is, the names
> aren't in any particular order so I try piping it to sort:
>
> help get-* | sort -property name
>
> but the sort order doesn't change.
>
> Have I overlooked something obvious?
>
> TIA.
>
> --Philip
>
>

"Philip Colmer" wrote:

> I'm trying to get to grips with PowerShell and so I'm experimenting with
> various bits and pieces. In the process, I do this:
>
> help get-*
>
> which, as I would expect, gives me the synopsis help for all of the commands
> that start with "get-". So far, so good. Trouble is, the names aren't in any
> particular order so I try piping it to sort:
>
> help get-* | sort -property name
>
> but the sort order doesn't change.
>
> Have I overlooked something obvious?
>
> TIA.
>
> --Philip
>
>
>

It seemed a bit subtle for a beginner why it wouldn't look like it's not
sorting.
Here is what is happening
1."help get-*" will display paged output on the console(without sending help
object to the next pipeline)
if you look at the definition of "help" function,
[^_^]PS[103]>ls function:/help | select definition | fl
Definition : get-help $args[0] | out-host -paging
definition simply displays the help information on the "host" without
sending it to next pipe
And the result is what you see on the console(unsorted output)
2. As a result of step #1, "sort -property name" will receive no input
object to sort
therefore nothing happens

So here is a workaround for your intention(hmm i kind of assumed it )
[^_^]PS[104]>get-help get-* | sort -property name | more
Name Category Synopsis
---- -------- --------
Get-Acl Command Gets the access
contro...
Get-Alias Command Returns alias names
fo...
*** snip ***
<SPACE> next page; <CR> next line; Q quit
[^_^]PS[105]>

There we are getting the help data through "get-help get-*" and sending the
output
to the next pipeline for "sort-object" to sort. and "more" will "paginate"
the output