powertips

PowerShell supports two types of multi-dimensional arrays: jagged arrays and true multidimensional arrays. Jagged arrays are normal PowerShell...

While you can add and remove array elements with PowerShell arrays, this is an expensive operation and not recommended with large numbers of...

If you have ever written scripts using VBScript, you probably know COM objects which are DLLs and work like command libraries. You can use COM...

If you'd like to download larger files from the Internet and get a progress indicator, you can load the .NET Visual Basic assemblies, which...

You can tap into the wealth of .NET methods easily. Use New-Object to instantiate a new .NET class, and off you go. For example, instantiate an...

When you automate file system tasks, you may want to know where special folders such as MyPictures or Documents are located. The .NET class...

If you need to find helper files that are stored in the same folder, you may want to know where a given script is stored. The automatic variable...

Should you try and use PowerShell as a log-on script, you may want to know who is actually running the script to access user specific folders or...

Format-Table is a very convenient cmdlet to output data as table. You can pick the object properties you want to output like this: Dir |...

Occasionally, you might want to find files that are older than a give number of days to delete or backup those. A simple filter can provide that...

Creating arrays in PowerShell is easy using the comma delimiter. The next line creates an array with five elements: $myArray = 'Hello', 12,...

Whenever you call a function or cmdlet, PowerShell uses a built-in mechanism to handle results: If no results are returned, PowerShell returns...

Hash Tables are a great way to find duplicates. Simply use the Hash Table as lookup to see if the file (or element) was already added to the Hash...

Hash Tables are convenient but are not true objects. This is bad because you are unable to output the hash content to formatting cmdlets or export...

Hash Tables store key-value pairs, and you normally cannot sort its content. Let's define a Hash Table first to examine this: $hash =...

Hash Tables are a great way to organize data. A hash table stores key-value-pairs. To create a new hash table variable, try this: $person = @{} You...

Unless you override how PowerShell stores variable content, you may find that PowerShell does not automatically pick the best type. For example,...

You can easily manage environment variables with the predefined env: drive. For example, to add a new environment variable, type this: $env:launched...

If you need to write more robust scripts, it makes sense to write-protect certain variables. Whenever you want a variable to set its content as...

Keeping track of a variable’s purpose can be accomplished by assigning a clear text description: $ip = '10.10.10.10' Set-Variable ip...

With PowerShell, you can assign values to multiple variables. For example, to initialize three variables to the same default value, use this: $a =...