$a = 1,2,3

$a | gm

TypeName: System.Int32

$a.GetType().FullName

FullName: System.Object[]

 $a = [int[]] $a

$a | gm

System.Int32

$a.GetType().FullName

System.Int32[]

As you can see, what are the Types inconsistent?  Am I missing or just not understanding something?

There is an explanation for the above behavior.

When you pipe $a to get-member ($a | get-member), get-member is returning the members for each item in the collection (one result for each type). So if my collection was $a = 1, "Hello", 3 , I would get both System.Int32 and System.String as the TypeNames.

If I would then try $a.GetType().FullName, I would get the System.Object[]. By default collections in PowerShell are collections of System.Object (the base object that all .NET objects inherit from). By being that type of collection, it can contain any type of .NET object.

When you cast the collection as [int[]], you are casting it to an array of System.Int32's, and all the members of that array will need to be System.Int32 or could be cast to System.Int32. Piping that same collection to get-member will have the same effect as above, since get-member is evaluating each member of the collection, not the collection as a whole.

Hope this helps... Good luck!

Definitely makes sense. Thank you smurawski!