Powershell

PowerShell uses a number of so-called type accelerators that help with long .NET type names. Instead of using...

Internal system functions are often helpful, but always make sure you fully understand what they do. A particularly popular system method is called...

In PowerShell, anything is represented by objects, and here is a helpful one-liner that examines any object and copies its members as text into your...

In PowerShell 5, the new support for enums makes dealing with bit values much easier as you’ve seen in previous tips. Even setting or clearing...

Setting or clearing bit flags in a decimal is not particular hard but unintuitive. Here is a quick refresher showing how you can set and clear...

In the previous tip we illustrated how you can use PowerShell 5’s new enums to easily decipher bit flags, and even test for individual flags....

Occasionally, you might have to deal with bit flag values. Each bit in a number represents a certain setting, and your code might need to determine...

Generic types can use placeholders for actual types, and you may be wondering why that can be exciting. There are a number of data types, for...

Here is another use case for the new class feature in PowerShell 5. In the previous example, we illustrated how you can derive new classes from...

PowerShell 5 comes with built-in support for classes. You can use this new feature to enhance existing .NET classes. Here is an example: let’s...

PowerShell can call internal Windows API functions, and in this example, we’d like to show how you can change the show state of an application...

Pester is an open source module shipping with Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, and can be downloaded from the PowerShell Gallery...

When you read environment variables in PowerShell, you probably make use of the “env:” drive. This line retrieves the environment...

When setting environment variables through the PowerShell “env:” drive, you are always just manipulating the process set. It applies to...

In the past, Microsoft shipped two PowerShell hosts: the basic PowerShell console, and the more sophisticated PowerShell ISE. Some users used code...

PowerShell is open source now, and the next big release of PowerShell is being developed in the open. If you’d like to take a peek preview,...

When you need to cache logon credentials to a file, this is typically done by piping the credential to Export-Clixml which produces a rather lengthy...

If you have colleagues that don’t know PowerShell, and you would like them to get started, here are three free learning resources:...

PowerShell uses execution policy to determine which scripts to run. There are in fact five scopes where execution policy can be defined, and to see...

Execution policy determines what kind of scripts PowerShell will execute. You need to set execution policy to something other than Undefined,...

Classes can define so-called “static” members. Static members (properties and methods) can be invoked by the class itself and do not...

Classes can have so-called constructors. Constructors are methods that initialize a new object. Constructors are simply methods that share the name...

Methods in classes can be overloaded: you can define multiple methods with the same name but different parameters. This works similar to parameter...

One of the great advantages of classes vs. [PSCustomObject] is their ability to also define methods (commands). Here is an example that implements a...

Class properties can be assigned a mandatory type and a default value. When you instantiate an object from a class, the properties are pre-populated...

Beginning in PowerShell 5, there is a new keyword called “class”. It creates new classes for you. You can use classes as a blue print...

Working with .NET type names can be tiring because these names can be long. Here is an example: #requires -Version 2.0 Add-Type -AssemblyName...

How do you calculate the age of a person, based on birthday? You can subtract the current time delivered by Get-Date from the birthday, but the...

New-Object creates new instances of objects, and you have seen one example in the past “Speech Week”: PowerShell was able to create a...

The .NET speech engine accepts more than just plain text. If you use SpeakSsml() instead of Speak(), you can use XML to switch languages, speak...