Yesterday we looked at how PowerShell can turn IEEE754 floating point values returned by a sensor into the actual value. This involved reversing the...
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Converting IEEE754 (Float) (Part 1)
PowerShell is extremely versatile and nowadays often used with IoT and sensors as well. Some return values in IEEE754 float format which typically...
Be Careful With “Throw” Statements (Part 2)
In the previous tip we explained how the throw statement can be influenced by $ErrorActionPreference set to “SilentlyContinue”, and that throw will...
Be Careful With “Throw” Statements (Part 1)
Throw is a PowerShell statement that emits an exception to the caller and then exits the code. At least in theory. In the real world, throw might...
Reading News Feeds
Here’s a special service to users with German language skills – and a challenge to adjust the code for everyone else: the code below...
Enabling Preview of PowerShell Files in Windows Explorer
When you view PowerShell scripts in Windows Explorer and have the preview pane open, by default you don’t get a code preview for your script...
Removing Empty Array Elements (Part 2)
If you want to eliminate completely empty array elements (and do not need to focus on empty properties), here are some approaches with fundamentally...
Removing Empty Array Elements (Part 1)
Occasionally you come across lists (arrays) with empty elements. What’s the best way of removing empty elements? Let’s first focus on a...
“Dangerous” Comparisons
Let’s assume in an array you want to get rid of all elements that are either empty or null. This is what many would do: PS>...
Calculating First and Last Day of Month
For reporting and similar use cases, scripts may require the first and last day in a given month. The first day is easy, yet the last day depends on...
Formatting a DateTime
Whenever you have a true DateTime (and not a string, for example), you have plenty of powerful ways to format. You can get DateTime objects...
Extracting Windows Installation Date
Ever wondered how old your Windows installation is? A one-liner can tell: PS> (Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_OperatingSystem).InstallDate Freitag,...
Hide OneDrive from File Explorer
Are you tired of OneDrive icons polluting your file explorer tree view? If you don’t use OneDrive, then here are two handy functions that hide...
Turn a Windows Server into a Workstation
PowerShell 5 and later releases come with a cmdlet to automatically add new Windows features, so if you are running a Windows Server and would like...
Automatically Printing to XPS Files
XPS is a document format similar to PDF from Microsoft. Although it never really was used in a large scale, it can still be a valuable internal...
Removing BOM from the Unicode Files
BOM (Byte Order Mask) is a characteristic byte sequence used in some Unicode encoded text files. If you receive text files with BOM that need to be...
PowerShell Cheat Sheet Compilation (Part 2)
In the previous tip we pointed you to a great compilation of PowerShell cheat sheets. Let’s now check out how easily PowerShell can download...
PowerShell Cheat Sheet Compilation (Part 1)
Here is a great compilation of popular PowerShell cheat sheets, completely free and ready for download:...
Get Text File Encoding
Text files can be stored using different encodings, and to correctly reading them, you must specify the encoding. That’s why most cmdlets...
Controlling PowerShell Transparency with Mouse Wheel
On Windows 10, when you hold CTRL+SHIFT and then move your mouse wheel, you can easily control the transparency of console window, including the...
Retrieving Windows Product Key
Here is a one-liner that retrieves your original Windows product key: (Get-WmiObject -Class...
Printing PDF Files (Part 2)
In the previous tip we explained how PowerShell can send PDF documents to the default PDF printer. This generic approach is OK for simple scenarios...
Printing PDF Files (Part 1)
To automatically print PDF documents, unfortunately you cannot use Out-Printer. Out-Printer can only send pure text documents to a printer. However,...
Installing Linux on Windows 10
Windows 10 comes with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature that you can use to run various Linux distributions. Launch a PowerShell with...