powertips

If you must know how many days are between two dates, you can easily find out by using New-TimeSpan: $startdate = Get-Date $enddate = Get-Date -Date...

In PowerShell 3.0, an option was added to define default values for arbitrary cmdlet parameters. This line, for example, would set the default value...

Often, scripts add new text to existing text. Here is a piece of code that may look familiar to you: Measure-Command { $text = "Hello" for...

To find all working days in a given month, here is a neat little one-liner: $month = 7 1..31 | ForEach-Object { Get-Date -Day $_ -Month $month } |...

Occasionally, you may notice that folders have a length of 1 byte. This was introduced in PowerShell 3.0. In PowerShell 2.0, they did not report...

Background jobs can be a great thing to speed up scripts because they can do things in parallel. However, background jobs only work well if the code...

PowerShell supports the keyword "exit" which is a scope-based. It may work much differently than you assumed it would. Let's take a...

There are two special keywords in PowerShell that you can use in loops: break and continue. With continue, the loop continues but skips the...

To read a Windows environment variable in PowerShell, simply use the prefix "env:": PS> $env:windirC:\WindowsPS> $env:USERNAMETobias...

Nested hash tables can be a great alternative to multidimensional arrays. They can be used to store data sets in an easy-to-manage way. Have a look:...

When you assign new items to an array often, you may experience a performance problem. Here is a sample that illustrates how you should not do it:...

Often, people use file-based logging. There is nothing wrong about that, but using the built-in event log system provided by Windows may be much...

With PowerShell, it can be a piece of cake to read out Registry values. Here is your simple code template: $RegPath =...

When you want to use error handlers with errors that occur inside a cmdlet, then you can only catch such exceptions when you set the -ErrorAction of...

You can use the -split operator to easily split a path in its components. The result is always an array. Simply use comparison operators to exclude...

Maybe you'd like to be able to occasionally skip certain parts of your profile script. For example, in the ISE editor, simply add this...

You probably know that PowerShell supports profile scripts. Simply make sure the file found in $profile exists. It's a plain script that gets...

There are plenty of low level system functions that PowerShell can use. This one, for example, creates a temporary file name:...

Let's assume you have a bunch of scripts (or pictures or log files or whatever) in a folder, and you'd like to rename all files. The new file name...

If you'd like to reorganize your picture archive, then here is a piece of code that reads the "DateTaken" information from picture...

Most software registers itself in the Registry. Here is a piece of code that reads all installed software from the 32-bit and 64-bit hive and works...

To run gpupdate.exe remotely, you could use a script like this: function Start-GPUpdate { param ( [String[]] $ComputerName ) $code = { $rv = 1 |...

Have you ever been puzzled just what the connection string would look like for a given database? When you create a new data source in Control Panel,...

Splatting is a great way of forwarding parameters to another cmdlet. Here is an example that can be used to encapsulate WMI calls and make them...

Splatting was introduced in PowerShell 3.0, but many users still never heard of this. It is a technique to programmatically submit parameters to a...

If you need to find out the Active Directory groups your user account is in, typically you would query the Active Directory, and you would have to...

Setting permissions for Registry keys isn't trivial. With a little trick, though, it is no big deal anymore. First, open REGEDIT and create a...

If you know that your script requires Administrator privileges, then you should add this to the top of your script: #requires -runasadministrator...

Maybe you need to remove some permission settings from NTFS permissions. Let's assume you want to remove all permissions for a specific user...

Before you can run a PowerShell script, the execution policy needs to allow this. Typically, you would use this line to enable script execution:...