Publishing on Feruary 2, 2023
In our previous tip we discussed a simple way to extend the PowerShell command set. By saving scripts in a folder that you add to the environment variable $env:path, PowerShell recognizes all scripts in this folder as new commands.
PowerShell scripts support the same mechanism for user parameters that you’d use for functions. Let’s take a look how you can add a new script-based command to your PowerShell that uses parameters.
Save the script below as “New-Password.ps1” to a folder named c:\myPsCommands. You may have to create the folder.
[CmdletBinding()] param ( $CapitalLetter = 4, $Numeric = 1, $LowerLetter = 3, $Special = 2 ) $characters = & { 'ABCDEFGHKLMNPRSTUVWXYZ' -as [char[]] | Get-Random -Count $CapitalLetter '23456789'.ToCharArray() | Get-Random -Count $Numeric 'abcdefghkmnprstuvwxyz'.ToCharArray() | Get-Random -Count $LowerLetter '§$%&?=#*+-'.ToCharArray() | Get-Random -Count $Special } | Sort-Object -Property { Get-Random } $characters -join ''
Next, add the folder path to PowerShell’s command search path, for example by running this:
PS> $env:path += ";c:\myPSCommands"
Now you can run any of the scripts that you stored in the folder just like regular commands. If the script features a param() block at its start, you can supply parameters, too. When you followed the example, you now have a command called New-Password that can generate complex passwords, and parameters help you compose the passwords:
PS> New-Password -CapitalLetter 2 -Numeric 1 -LowerLetter 8 -Special 2 yx+nKfph?M8rw
