Powershell – Use Powershell to read XML comments

powershellscheduled-taskwindows 7

So I'm working on a way to use Powershell to get a list of scheduled tasks. Through my research, I determined that the only way to get "most" tasks is to use SCHTASKS. This command does allow for XML output which you can push right into a variable:

$tasks = [xml](SCHTASKS /QUERY /XML ONE)

Now, the problem comes up is that the task name is stored as an XML comment. When added to tasks object, all of this data is stored under the "#comment" key. Using normal addressing rules, you would be accessing:

$tasks.Tasks.#comment

The above doesn't work of course because the number sign is a special character for comments so it ignores it. I can't escape the character with a back tick "`" so I am at a loss of what to do. I'd rather avoid having to do all of this through a csv file since I loose a lot of data when I do that.

Thanks

Best Answer

Try this:

$tasks.Tasks.'#comment'