[powershell] How to print environment variables to the console in PowerShell?

The following is works best in my opinion:

Get-Item Env:PATH

1. It's shorter and therefore a little bit easier to remember than Get-ChildItem. There's no hierarchy with environment variables.
2. The command is symmetrical to one of the ways that's used for setting environment variables with Powershell. (EX: Set-Item -Path env:SomeVariable -Value "Some Value")
3. If you get in the habit of doing it this way you'll remember how to list all Environment variables; simply omit the entry portion. (EX: Get-Item Env:)

I found the syntax odd at first, but things started making more sense after I understood the notion of Providers. Essentially PowerShell let's you navigate disparate components of the system in a way that's analogous to a file system.

What's the point of the trailing colon in Env:? Try listing all of the "drives" available through Providers like this:

PS> Get-PSDrive

I only see a few results... (Alias, C, Cert, D, Env, Function, HKCU, HKLM, Variable, WSMan). It becomes obvious that Env is simply another "drive" and the colon is a familiar syntax to anyone who's worked in Windows.

You can navigate the drives and pick out specific values:

Get-ChildItem C:\Windows
Get-Item C:
Get-Item Env:
Get-Item HKLM:
Get-ChildItem HKLM:SYSTEM