PowerShell Introduction

PowerShell is an interactive shell and a scripting language for Windows environments. It has several uses including for automation and configuration.

It is also object oriented and based on the .NET Framework.

To run commands, open the Windows PowerShell app:

You can then run commands such as changing directory like in DOS.

PowerShell also has the concept of “aliasing”, which is running a command by typing a different name. For example, there are several UNIX commands that are available in PowerShell, such as “ls” for directory listing (“dir” in DOS). The idea is that this helps users of other scripting languages learn PowerShell quickly:

You can read more about the available UNIX commands and aliasing here.

To get more information on an alias you can typing the name “Get-Alias”:

Note PowerShell is case insensitive.

To get help, you can run Get-Help:

This provides help on the PowerShell help system. You can also provide parameters to get help on specific commands:

PowerShell also supports wildcards:

To display all commands available in the system, you can type in “Get-Command”:

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Carl de Souza Enterprise Architect at Microsoft · AI Technology Expert