Everything in powershell is an object, but sometimes the output format doesn't make it clear. Select-String basically returns a match object with some nested re

Everything in powershell is an object, but sometimes the output format doesn't make it clear. Select-String basically returns a match object with some nested results, but the output formatting makes it awkward to see. Pipe it to | format-list * to investigate it, and you'll see a bunch of members. In this case if what you want is just the matched string, you want to expand the `Matches` property of the object, then expand the value property of each of those. In this case the term 'expand' is key: if you just use `select` it'll return you the property, name and all. Use `-expand` to return the plain array. So something like: Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path * | Select-String $pattern | select -expand matches | select -expand value which you can then use how you like. An alternate form is (Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Path * | Select-String $pattern).Matches.Value because the . notation for member access works on all items in an array (Matches in this case).