LINQ

LINQ provides object queries when working with .NET objects, SQL, XML, and ADO.Net datasets. It has some performance advantages for in-memory processing, as the following example nicely demonstrates:

$path = "E:\Test"
$filter = "TestFile1*"

#Get-ChildItem with exclude
Measure-Command -Expression {
    $files = Get-ChildItem -Path "$path\*" -Filter $filter -Exclude *000* | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 5
} | Select-Object -Property TotalSeconds #17 - 20 seconds

#Get-ChildItem with Where-Object filtering
Measure-Command -Expression {
    $files = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Filter $filter | Where-Object Name -NotLike *000* | Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime -Descending | Select-Object -First 5
} | Select-Object -Property TotalSeconds # 5- 7 seconds

#.NET objects combined with LINQ
Measure-Command -Expression...