PSMDTAG:FAQ: What is the difference between single quoted and double quoted strings? ANSWER: Double quoted string expand variables and single quoted strings do not. Example: PS> $x="TEST" PS> "This is a $x" This is a TEST PS> 'This is a...

Ben Pearce was gracious enough to put together a good looking PowerShell Cheat Sheet which I've included as an attachment to this blog post. By definition, a cheat sheet is incomplete so this contains the things that Ben has found to be the most import...

Marcus Nasarek did a nice comparison of Bash vs PowerShell in Linux magazine HERE . It is only 2 pages but he covers the key elements and has been very fair to it. I appreciate the fact that he took the time to clearly understand PowerShell. In the past...

If you have used Windows Server 2008, probably you had experience with managing server features. Server Manager is a traditional way to install/uninstall server features. On Windows 2008 Server R2 Beta , Windows PowerShell provides a new approach to managing...

The other day I was writing a script and decided that I wanted to break it into a couple of files and have the main script dot-source a library script in the same directory. Here is the problem that I ran into:   PS> Get-ChildItem Directory: Microsoft...

PowerShell V2 introduces a new capability which allows you to remotely manage machines in your organization. I will give a basic overview of PowerShell remoting here and follow it up with some adavanced topics later. Are you ready for the fun.. A remote...

Igor Moochnick announced the first release of PASH , an open source implementation of PowerShell.  (I tripled check the date on his blog to make sure it really said April 6th and not April 1st. :-) ).  This is really exciting stuff.  This...

Let me start of by suggesting you take a few minutes and read Laerte Junior’s excellent blog entry Exceptional PowerShell DBA Pt1 Orphaned Users . Laerte does a great job describing the scenario, the approach he took to solving it and then he included...

Quest has released a beta of PowerGUI Visual Studio (aka PowerGUI VSX). Check out Kirk Munro’s blog entry HERE for more details. Check out this screenshot: I can’t wait to install it and kick the tires! Jeffrey Snover [MSFT] Distinguished...

Windows Management Framework 3.0 CTP1 makes some updated management functionality available to be installed on Windows 7 SP1 & Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Windows Management Framework 3.0 contains Windows PowerShell 3.0, WMI & WinRM. Windows PowerShell...

PSMDTAG:FAQ: ErrorLevel - what is the PowerShell equivalent? In Cmd.exe, %ErrorLevel% is a builtin variable which indicates the success or failure of the last executable run. In PowerShell, we support: $? Contains True if last operation succeeded...

<Note - the scripts and datafiles used in this blog entry are attached as a zip file> A number of scenarios require the creation of XML documents. This blog shows you how you can use PowerShell scripts to easily create XML Documents. Here...

More great cmdlets from our partners. Quest Software , known for its ActiveRoles Server and PowerGUI , is offering its new Active Directory cmdlets to the community free of charge. To get them, click: PowerShell Cmdlets for Active Directory . ...

M ost shells (such as Windows CMD.EXE and the UNIX shells SH, KSH, CSH, and BASH) operate by executing a command or utility in a new process, and presenting the results (or errors) to the user as text. Text-based processing is the way in which system...

Larry Hayden posted a query about dates at: http://techtasks.com/bookmarks/powershell/2006/09/interview-with-a-scripter-jeffrey-snover/ He has a script which gets all the Application Events that happened TODAY: ———————————————————— $today = [DateTime...

<Edited 7/2/2006 to add tags and category> Wei Wu provided a nice one liner in response to a query in our NewsGroup: Microsoft.Public.Windows.PowerShell about how to resolve a hostname into an IP Address: PS> [ System.Net.Dns]::GetHostAddresses...

Let's have a little fun with Rename-Item: [3112:0]PS> dir     Directory: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\FileSystem::C:\temp\jps Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name ----                -------------     ------ ---- -a---          3/5/2007...

I often want to find things that happened Today. For instance, which files got changed today. Windows PowerShell makes this easy to do but it can be a bit verbose and I do it a lot so I've added a function to my profile: IsToday. function isToday ...

In this blog I will try to explain different features of sort-object(Sort) cmdlet. For the purpose of this blog, I assume the following objects exist: MSH C:\temp\monad> $a,$b,$c,$d Score Name ----- ---- 100 John 90 Henry 90...

MOW is now posting the details of his Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell demo that he performed at my TechEd talk. This is worthwhile for everyone to review. For the people at the talk, we covered a huge amount of data in a very short time...

On October 15th I released a large collection of scripts called the PowerShellPack .  The PowerShellPack has tons of PowerShell V2 scripts that can be used to do all sorts of fun and practical things.  Today, we’ll show how to use a module in...

Because of the nature of the Windows Service pack (SP) releases, all the windows updates are consumed by SP upgrade. So once you upgrade to a new SP all the updates that were installed earlier cannot be uninstalled. Since Windows PowerShell is released...

I just got out of Bob Muglia's keynote speech where he formally announced Windows PowerShell (previously known as Monad). The key things he announced are: Monad (MSH) has a new name: Windows PowerShell Windows PowerShell will RTW (Web download...

<This is a super-important issue so you should definitely start using this in your scripts that you share with others (that have side effects on the system). Please try it out and blog about it to others so that it becomes a community norm. Thanks...

Smith Catar was looking at my Tech Ed demos and noticed that I used block comments. These are not in the CTP that you have so I guess I sorta let this one leak out. Yes - V2 will have BLOCK COMMENTS!!! Block comments start with "<# and end with...