Effective Windows PowerShell

Effective Windows PowerShell

Grok Windows PowerShell and Get More From It.

Keith Hill Copyright ? 2007-2009 3/8/2009

Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 Item 1: Four Cmdlets that are the Keys to Discovery within PowerShell .............................................................. 1

Key #1: Get-Command .................................................................................................................................... 1 Key #2: Get-Help ............................................................................................................................................. 2 Key #3: Get-Member....................................................................................................................................... 5 Key #4: Get-PSDrive ........................................................................................................................................ 6 PowerShell 2.0 Update..................................................................................................................................... 7 Item 2: Understanding Output ............................................................................................................................ 8 Output is Always a .NET Object ........................................................................................................................ 8 Function Output Consists of Everything That Isn't Captured ............................................................................. 9 Other Types of Output That Can't Be Captured .............................................................................................. 11 Item 3: Know What Objects Are Flowing Down the Pipeline.............................................................................. 12 Item 4: Output Cardinality - Scalars, Collections and Empty Sets - Oh My!......................................................... 15 Working with Scalars ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Working with Collections ............................................................................................................................... 16 Working with Empty Sets ............................................................................................................................... 17 Item 5: Use the Objects, Luke. Use the Objects! ............................................................................................... 19 Item 6: Know Your Output Formatters .............................................................................................................. 22 Item 7: Understanding PowerShell Parsing Modes ............................................................................................ 31 Item 8: Understanding ByPropertyName Pipeline Bound Parameters................................................................ 35 Item 9: Understanding ByValue Pipeline Bound Parameters.............................................................................. 38 Item 10: Error Handling ..................................................................................................................................... 42 Terminating Errors ......................................................................................................................................... 42 Non-terminating Errors.................................................................................................................................. 42

Error Variables ........................................................................................................................................... 43 Working with Non-Terminating Errors ........................................................................................................... 45 Handling Terminating Errors .......................................................................................................................... 46

Trap Statement .......................................................................................................................................... 46 Try / Catch / Finally .................................................................................................................................... 48 Item 11: Regular Expressions - One of the Power Tools in PowerShell ............................................................... 50 PowerShell 2.0 Update................................................................................................................................... 51

Item 12: Comparing Arrays ............................................................................................................................... 51 Item 13: Use Set-PSDebug -Strict In Your Scripts - Religiously............................................................................ 53

PowerShell 2.0 Update................................................................................................................................... 55 Item 14: Commenting Out Lines in a Script File ................................................................................................. 55

PowerShell 2.0 Update................................................................................................................................... 56 Item 15: Using the Output Field Separator Variable $OFS .................................................................................. 57

Introduction

I am a big fan of the "Effective" series of programming books from Effective COM to Effective XML. Without trying to be too presumptuous, I wanted to capture some of the tidbits I have picked up over the last couple of years using Windows PowerShell interactively and writing production build and test scripts. These items were written for PowerShell 1.0. Where appropriate I have added PowerShell 2.0 Update sections to discuss how the item is affected by the upcoming 2.0 release. As a final note, a number of the PowerShell code snippets shown use functionality from the PowerShell Community Extensions which can be downloaded from .

Item 1: Four Cmdlets that are the Keys to Discovery within PowerShell

This first item is pretty basic and I debated whether or not it belongs in an "Effective PowerShell" article. However, these four cmdlets are critical to figuring out how to make PowerShell do your bidding and that makes them worth covering. The following four cmdlets are the first four that you should learn backwards and forwards. With these four simple-to-use cmdlets you can get started using PowerShell - effectively.

Key #1: Get-Command

This cmdlet is the sure cure to the blank, PowerShell prompt of death. That is, you just installed PowerShell, fired it up and you're left looking at this:

Now what? Many applications suffer from the "blank screen of death" i.e. you download the app, install it and run it and now you're presented with a blank canvas or an empty document. Often it isn't obvious how to get started using a new application. In PowerShell, what you need to get started is Get-Command to find all the commands that are available from PowerShell. This includes all your old console utilities, batch files, VBScript files, etc. Basically anything that is executable can be executed from PowerShell. Of course, you didn't download PowerShell just to run these old executables and scripts. You want to see what PowerShell can do. Try this:

PS> Get-Command

CommandType ----------Cmdlet ...

Name ---Add-Content

Definition ---------Add-Content [-Path] ................
................

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