Comparing Results

PowerShell makes it easy to compare results and find only things that changed. For example, you may want to list only processes that started after a given time. To do that, first create the initial snapshot of running processes. Then, at a later time, create another snapshot and compare both using compare-object:

$base = Get-Process
notepad
$compare = Get-Process

Compare-Object $base $compare

Compare-Object only lists those objects that exist in only one of the snapshots. A "side indicator" indicates whether the object existed in the first or in the second result set.

$shot1 = Dir $home
Set-Content $home\testfile1.txt "A new file"
$shot2 = Dir $home
Compare-Object $shot1 $shot2

Compare-Object will return wrong results when there are more than 10 consecutive differences in both snapshots because it uses an internal "SyncWindow" of +- 5 elements. In this case, increase the sync window using the -syncWindow parameter:

Compare-Object $shot1 $shot2 -syncWindow 20