Powershell is the Windows Scripting Language and shell environment that is built using the .NET framework. This also allows Powershell to execute .NET functions directly from its shell.

Most Powershell commands, called cmdlets, are written in .NET. Unlike other scripting languages and shell environments, the output of these cmdlets are objects : making Powershell somewhat object oriented. This also means that running cmdlets allows you to perform actions on the output object(which makes it convenient to pass output from one cmdlet to another). The normal format of a cmdlet is represented using Verb-Noun; for example the cmdlet to list commands is called Get-Command.

Common verbs to use include: Get(g), Start(sa), Stop(sp), New(n), Revoke(rk), more: link.

Basic Powershell Commands

Now that we've understood how cmdlets works - let's explore how to use them! The main thing to remember here is that Get-Command and Get-Help are your best friends!

Using Get-Help

Get-Help displays information about a cmdlet. To get help about a particular command, run the following: Get-Help Command-Name

You can also understand how exactly to use the command by passing in the -examples flag. This would return output like the following:

Using Get-Command

Get-Command gets all the cmdlets installed on the current Computer. The great thing about this cmdlet is that it allows for pattern matching like the following:

Get-Command Verb-* or Get-Command *-Noun

Running Get-Command New-* to view all the cmdlets for the verb new displays the following:

Object Manipulation

In the previous task, we saw how the output of every cmdlet is an object. If we want to actually manipulate the output, we need to figure out a few things:

• passing output to other cmdlets
• using specific object cmdlets to extract information

The Pipeline(|) is used to pass output from one cmdlet to another. A major difference compared to other shells is that instead of passing text or string to the command after the pipe, powershell passes an object to the next cmdlet. Like every object in object oriented frameworks, an object will contain methods and properties. You can think of methods as functions that can be applied to output from the cmdlet and you can think of properties as variables in the output from a cmdlet. To view these details, pass the output of a cmdlet to the Get-Member cmdlet :

Verb-Noun | Get-Member

An example of running this to view the members for Get-Command is:

Get-Command | Get-Member -MemberType Method