Measuring Objects (Measure-Object)

Command Equivalents

Description

The Measure-Object cmdlet is a powerful utility for performing calculations on collections of objects. In its simplest form, it can act as a direct equivalent to the Linux wc (word count) command when used on the content of a text file.

However, its true power lies in its ability to calculate statistics—such as the sum, average, minimum, and maximum—on the numerical properties of any object collection passed to it through the pipeline.

Measuring Text Files (like wc)

When piped the output of Get-Content, Measure-Object can count lines, words, and characters.

# Get statistics on a text file
Get-Content -Path ".\my-document.txt" | Measure-Object -Line -Word -Character

This produces an object with Lines, Words, and Characters properties.

Measuring Object Properties

The real utility comes from using the -Property parameter to specify a property, then using switches like -Sum, -Average, -Maximum, or -Minimum to perform a calculation on that property for all objects in the collection.

Common Usage

Counting the Number of Files

If you just want a count of objects, you can pipe them to Measure-Object. The Count property of the result will have the total.

# Count the number of .log files in the current directory
Get-ChildItem -Filter "*.log" | Measure-Object

Calculating the Total Size of Files

A very common use case is to find the total size of all files in a directory tree by calculating the sum of their Length properties.

# Recursively get all files, then sum their Length (size) property
Get-ChildItem -File -Recurse | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum

Getting Full Statistics on File Sizes

You can combine multiple measurement switches in one command to get a full statistical summary.

# Get the count, sum, average, max, and min size for all files in a folder
Get-ChildItem -File | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum -Average -Maximum -Minimum

The output will be an object with properties like Count, Sum, Average, Maximum, and Minimum.

Calculating Average Process Memory

This command calculates the average memory (Working Set) used by all running processes.

# Get all processes and calculate the average of their 'WS' property
Get-Process | Measure-Object -Property WS -Average