powertips

PowerShell variables are inherited downstream by default, not upstream. So any variable you create at a given scope is passed to any code you call...

"Break" is a special keyword that you can use to exit loops and conditions prematurely. Have a look: Do { $pwd = Read-Host 'Enter your...

When you handle errors yourself using Trap or try/catch, you should make sure that you set your ErrorActionPreference to "Stop" or specify...

In a previous tip, you learned that "Continue" can skip code in a loop. Another scenario for using "Continue" is error handling....

You will find that "Continue" is a special instruction that you can use in loops to skip the remainder of a loop. This next loop returns...

In a previous tip, you learned how to use RegEx to scrape information from Web pages. It really is just a matter of finding the right...

Regular expressions are a great way of identifying and retrieving text patterns. Take a look at the next code fragment as it defines a RegEx engine...

Probably the easiest way of reading raw Web page content is using the Web client object. This will read the Web content of...

Assigning (multiple) return values with Write-Output works well, but you should keep in mind that Write-Output is picky and returns the exact thing...

When you leave data behind, PowerShell automatically returns it to the caller. This may create strange-looking code. With Write-Output, you can...

There is a fundamental difference between outputting data using Write-Host and just "leaving info behind":" Function test {Write-Host...

In a previous tip, you learned how to register event log sources and write your own event log entries. With Show-Eventlog, you can easily open the...

Logging information to your event log is easy when using Write-Eventlog. You will just need to register your own event source first by using...

You can launch a separate PS environment and elevate it Iif you are running your script in a restricted environment and want to run a...

Whenever you need to enter credentials, you can either use Get-Credential or a low- level PS API function like so: $c =...

You can use Read-Host to hide user inputs for safe password prompts: $pwd = Read-Host -AsSecureString 'Enter Password'Enter Password: ******...

If you need to prompt for a secret password and do not want it to be visible while entered, you should use Get-Credential. This cmdlet returns a...

You will find that types can contain very useful methods. To get a list, you can pass the type to Get-Member, but do not forget to specify the...

You will find that one great advantage of 64bit-Environments is the address width of 8 bytes instead of 4 bytes. You can use this to identify...

Numeric types can store numbers in certain ranges. A byte for example stores values in the range 0-255. But do you know just what the range is for...

If you need to determine the days in a given month, you can use the static DaysInMonth() function provided by the DateTime type. As you can see, the...

You will find that the DateTime type supports a number of static methods to check dates. For example, you can check whether a year is a leap year...

Objects contain useful methods to access the object data. For example, DateTime objects support methods to display the date and time in various...

Unfortunately, PowerShells special ".." operator only supports numeric ranges: 1..10 You can use type conversion to get a range of...

Type conversion can help you count special characters in a text. For example, if you'd like to find out the number of tab characters in a text,...

In PowerShell, you can do multiple sequential type conversions. For example, you should first convert the string into a character array and then...

You will find that type conversion can do amazing things. For example, the next line accesses a system log by converting the log name to an EventLog...

In a previous tip, you learned about how to access WMI instances directly using their individual instance path. Here is how you can find that path...

If you know the path to a WMI instance, you can access it directly by converting the WMI path to a WMI object:...

PowerShell has a few shortcuts for popular .NET types like [WMI], [ADSI] or [Int]. You should read the FullName property if you'd like to know...