powertips

PowerShell 3.0 comes with a great new cmdlet: Invoke-WebRequest! You can use it for a zillion things, but it can also simply retrieve the content of...

If you'd have to process a long list of encoded information, let's say a list of hexadecimal values, how would you split the list into pairs...

Typically when you split a text using the -split operator or the Split() method, the split character is removed from the text: $profile -split...

Cutting off a part of a text at its beginning is easy. This line eats the first 3 characters: PS> 'C:\folder\file.txt'.SubString(3)...

Comparison operators usually return either $true or $false, but when applied to an array, return the array elements that match the comparison. You...

Often, it is necessary to output numbers, but you may want to control the number of digits and would like to control the formatting. The -f operator...

Here's a little function called Out-ExcelReport. Just pipe anything to it, and it will open in Microsoft Excel - provided it is installed on...

When you type in code into the new PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor, your code is not just "colorful". You may know that each color stands for a specific...

When you get yourself a process using Get-Process, what you get back is an object that has useful methods and writeable properties. This line will...

Sometimes, a script may want to execute some portion of its code elevated, for example to write to HKLM in the Registry or change protected...

PowerShell caters all tastes which is why the next two lines do the exact same thing and get all JPG pictures from your Windows folder: PS>...

In PowerShell 3.0, there is a cool new cmdlet called Show-Command: PS> Show-Command Get-Process It works both in the console and the ISE editor,...

The ISE editor in PowerShell 3.0 seems to have an interactive console, but it really isn't. It is just a simulated console. So any command that...

If you'd like to enter long lines of code into the console panel in the new PowerShell 3.0 ISE, you can press SHIFT+ENTER. This will add a line...

To protect you from damages while playing with PowerShell on a productive system, set the ”WhatIf” mode as default:...

Sometimes it becomes necessary to consolidate two or more objects into one. So, how would you combine object properties into one object? In a...

As you may have read, in PowerShell 3.0, there is a new family of cmdlets designed to improve the way we work with WMI. The powerful Get-WmiObject...

In PowerShell 3.0, Measure-Object can be applied not just to numeric data but to anything that is comparable. In PowerShell 2.0, this line would...

In a previous tip we explained that in PowerShell 3.0, every object has a Count property now. This even includes null values: PS> $null.Count 0...

In a previous tip, we explained how you can add a custom data type to your own custom objects that you might want to return from a function, and...

Finally, the property Count is available on all objects in PowerShell 3.0. This solves a great problem because it allows you to count results even...

In a previous tip we showed how you can remove all empty properties from an object and also sort its properties alphabetically. The code required...

Objects hold a lot of information and often, properties can also have null values. To reduce an object to only those properties that actually have a...

When you create functions that return custom objects, there is no way for you to declare which functions should display by default. PowerShell...

If you'd like to maintain a log file with all the commands you entered interactively - in the PowerShell console as well as in the ISE editor -...

In PowerShell 3.0, you can cast a hash table to a PSCustomObject type to easily generate your own objects: $content = @{ Name="Weltner"...

To prevent a function to be redefined or overwritten, you can write-protect it: function Test-Function { 'Hello World!' } Set-Item -Path...

There are numerous ways how you can create new objects that you may use to return results from your functions. One way is using JSON, a very simple...

You can enable the -WhatIf and -Confirm parameters in your functions too, and control which parts of your code get skipped if the user specifies...

In a previous tip you learned that assigning an enumeration data type to a function parameter automatically enables argument completion in...