PowerShell: Automatic Variables

By Xah Lee. Date: 2009-07-30. Last updated: 2025-04-04.

PowerShell has many builtin variables, called automatic variables.

💡 TIP: Variable names are case-insensitive

Environment Related

Home Dir, Init File

$home

full path of the user's home directory.
equivalent to "$env:homedrive$env:homepath" Windows environment variables

$home
# C:\Users\xah

$profile

full path of Profile (init file).

PowerShell: Profile (init file)

PowerShell Info

$PsHome

full path of the installation directory for PowerShell.

$PsHome
# C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7

$host

a object that represents the current host application. Sample value:

Name             : ConsoleHost
Version          : 7.1.4
InstanceId       :
UI               : System.Management.Automation.Internal.Host.InternalHostUserInterface
CurrentCulture   : en-US
CurrentUICulture : en-US
PrivateData      : Microsoft.PowerShell.ConsoleHost+ConsoleColorProxy
DebuggerEnabled  : True
IsRunspacePushed : False
Runspace         : System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.LocalRunspace

$PsVersionTable

A hash table object containing info about your PowerShell version.

Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      7.1.4
PSEdition                      Core
GitCommitId                    7.1.4
OS                             Microsoft Windows 10.0.19042
Platform                       Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion              3.0

Scripting Related

Standard Values

$true

represent true.

PowerShell: True, False (boolean)

$false

represent false.

$null

Represent no value.
Its the default value for variable.

Arguments and Script Name

$_

The current object in a pipeline.

dir | ForEach-Object {Write-Host $_ }

$args: A Array of the argument received by Function or script or block of code.

$MyInvocation

value is the object that contains info of your script, function.

# get the script path
$myinvocation.mycommand.path

# get the script name
$myinvocation.mycommand.name

# look at what members this object has
$myinvocation | get-member

$input: value is a enumerator object that contains the input that is passed to a function. The items in the enumerator are the objects in the current pipeline.
$pwd: value is a path object that represents the full path of the current dir.

Iterators

$ForEach: value is a enumerator object of the current ForEach-Object loop. This var exists only when a “for loop” is running. 〔see Loop, Iteration〕

Regex

$Matches

PowerShell: Regex Result ($Matches)

Error

$?: value is True if last operation succeeded, else False.
$LastExitCode: value is the exit code of the last program.
$Error: value is a array of objects, representing the recent errors. $Error[0] is the most recent, $Error[1] is the error before that, etc.

Complete List of Automatic Variables

type help about_automatic_variable

$$
$?
$^
$_
$args
$ConsoleFileName
$Error
$Event
$EventArgs
$EventSubscriber
$ExecutionContext
$false
$foreach
$HOME
$Host
$input
$IsCoreCLR
$IsLinux
$IsMacOS
$IsWindows
$LASTEXITCODE
$Matches
$MyInvocation
$NestedPromptLevel
$null
$PID
$PROFILE
$PSBoundParameters
$PSCmdlet
$PSCommandPath
$PSCulture
$PSDebugContext
$PSHOME
$PSItem
$PSScriptRoot
$PSSenderInfo
$PSUICulture
$PSVersionTable
$PWD
$Sender
$ShellId
$StackTrace
$switch
$this
$true