In PowerShell, How to refer to a cmdlet itself rather than executing it?

Question

I'm currently learning Powershell 101 using PowerShell 7.4, and I'm interested in inpecting the type of some expressions, for example by executing

 [Powershell] | gm

I get:

 TypeName: System.RuntimeType

or by executing

[Powershell].getType()

I get

IsPublic IsSerial Name            BaseType
-------- -------- ----            --------
False    False    RuntimeType     System.Reflection.TypeInfo

However, I can't get the type of a Cmdlet since it's executed automatically, for example :

 get-help | gm

this command give the members of the returned object, rather than the members of the Cmdlet itself.

---

I tried executing:

(Get-Command Get-Help).GetType()

I got:

IsPublic IsSerial Name          BaseType
-------- -------- ----          --------
True     False    CmdletInfo    System.Management.Automation.CommandInfo

So I think that the Get-Command Cmdlet does not return an object of type Cmdlet , instead, it gives a CmdletInfo object.

---

According to the Powershell SDK 7.4.0, the class of a Cmdlet is System.Management.Automation.Cmdlet

[System.Management.Automation.Cmdlet]

IsPublic IsSerial Name   BaseType

-------- -------- ----   --------

True     False    Cmdlet System.Management.Automation.Internal.InternalCommand

---

So how can I refer to a Cmdlet itself in Powershell instead of executing it to play with its features?

Answer 1

Use the .ImplementingType property of the System.Management.Automation.CmdletInfo instance returned by Get-Command:

(Get-Command Get-Help).ImplementingType

This directly returns a System.Type-derived instance that represents the .NET type that implements the Get-Help cmdlet, namely Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetHelpCommand.

Every time you call Get-Help from PowerShell code, an instance of Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetHelpCommand is created behind the scenes.

As you note, all cmdlets must derive from the System.Management.Automation.Cmdlet base class; the System.Management.Automation.PSCmdlet class (which itself derives from the former) is more typically used as the base class, as it provides better integration with the PowerShell runtime.

---

While you can directly obtain an instance of a cmdlet-implementing type as follows in order to inspect its properties, note that you won't be able to call .Invoke() on instances of PSCmdlet-derived types, which the majority of the built-in cmdlets are:

# Create an instance of the class that implements the `Get-Help` cmdlet.
$cmdletInstance = 
  (Get-Command Get-Help).ImplementingType::new()

# Ditto, using the type directly:
$cmdletInstance = 
  [Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetHelpCommand]::new()

A - rare - example of where calling .Invoke() does work is the Cmdlet-derived Get-Date:

# Same as calling `Get-Date`
(Get-Command Get-Date).ImplementingType::new().Invoke()