Windows PowerShell in Action

576 Pages·2007·6.826 MB·English

by  Bruce G. Payette

Windows PowerShell in Action

Windows PowerShell
in Action
BRUCE PAYETTE
MANNING
Greenwich
(74° w. long.)
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Manning Publications Co. Copyeditor: Benjamin Berg
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ISBN 1932394-90-7
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 – MAL – 11 10 09 08 07
To my wife, Tina, for all her love and support

brief contents
Part 1 Learning PowerShell 1
1 Welcome to PowerShell 3
2 The basics 25
3 Working with types 55
4 Operators and expressions 87
5 Advanced operators and variables 115
6 Flow control in scripts 147
7 Functions and scripts 177
8 Scriptblocks and objects 214
9 Errors, exceptions, and script debugging 251
Part 2 Using PowerShell 295
10 Processing text, files, and XML 297
11 Getting fancy—.NET and WinForms 344
12 Windows objects: COM and WMI 392
13 Security, security, security 440
vii

contents
foreword xv
preface xvii
acknowledgments xix
about this book xx
Part 1 LEARNING POWERSHELL 1
1 Welcome to PowerShell 3
1.1 What is PowerShell? 5
Shells, command-lines, and scripting languages 5 ✦ Why a new shell?
Why now? 7 ✦ The last mile problem 7
1.2 Soul of a new language 8
Learning from history 8 ✦ Leveraging .NET 9
1.3 Brushing up on objects 10
Reviewing object-oriented programming 11
Objects in PowerShell 12
1.4 Dude! Where’s my code? 13
Installing and starting PowerShell 13 ✦ Command editing 15
Command completion 16 ✦ Evaluating basic expressions 17
Processing data 18
1.5 Summary 23
2 The basics 25
2.1 Command concepts and terminology 27
Commands and cmdlets 27 ✦ Command categories 30
Aliases and elastic syntax 34
2.2 Parsing and PowerShell 37
How PowerShell parses 37 ✦ Quoting 38 ✦ Expression mode and
command mode parsing 41 ✦ Statement termination 43
ix