What's the command of call operator &?

Question

I used ls alias: and tried to find &. However, & is not in the output. What\'s &? Is it the combination of In

Answer 1

Some other uses for the call operator, not well documented:

# Get and set a variable in a module scope with the call operator 
# get module object
$m = get-module counter

& $m Get-Variable count
& $m Set-Variable count 33

# see module function definition
& $m Get-Item function:Get-Count

# run a cmdlet with a commandinfo object and the call operator
$d = get-command get-date
& $d

You can think of & { } as an anonymous function.

1..5 | & { process{$_ * 2} }

Another really useful operator is the subexpression operator. $( ) It's not just for inside strings. You can combine two statements and make them act as one.

$(echo hi; echo there) | measure

If and Foreach statements can go inside them too. You couldn't normally pipe from foreach (). So anywhere you could put an expression or pipeline, with $() you can put any statement or group of statements.

$(foreach ($i in 1..10) { $i;sleep 1 } ) | Out-Gridview

Although, I like streaming from foreach with the call operator (or function), so I don't have to wait.

 & {foreach ($i in 1..10) { $i;sleep 1 } } | Out-GridView