🧬 WQL / PowerShell

Win32_Keyboard: Sorting Keyboard Info (WQL has no ORDER BY)

WQL has no ORDER BY clause — this shows the standard workaround of piping Get-CimInstance results through Sort-Object on Win32_Keyboard.

By WindowsScripting.com · 631 B
KeyboardSorted.ps1
<#
.SYNOPSIS
    WQL reference: sorting Keyboard Info results (Win32_Keyboard).

.DESCRIPTION
    WQL (the WMI Query Language) does not support an ORDER BY clause —
    unlike regular SQL. Sort after the fact with Sort-Object instead;
    this is one of the most common WQL gotchas for people coming from
    SQL backgrounds.

.EXAMPLE
    .\KeyboardSorted.ps1
#>

[CmdletBinding()]
param()

$wqlQuery = "SELECT Description, Layout, NumberOfFunctionKeys FROM Win32_Keyboard"

Get-CimInstance -Query $wqlQuery |
    Sort-Object -Property Description |
    Format-Table -Property Description, Layout, NumberOfFunctionKeys -AutoSize