Book Image

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

By : Chris Dent
Book Image

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

By: Chris Dent

Overview of this book

PowerShell scripts offer a handy way to automate various chores, however working effectively with these scripts can be a difficult task. This comprehensive guide starts with the fundamentals before moving on to advanced-level topics to help you become a PowerShell Core 6.0 expert. The first module, PowerShell Core 6.0 Fundamentals, begins with the new features of PowerShell Core 6.0, installing it on Linux, and working with parameters, objects and .NET classes from within PowerShell Core 6.0. As you make your way through the chapters, you'll see how to efficiently manage large amounts of data and interact with other services using PowerShell Core 6.0. You'll be able to make the most of PowerShell Core 6.0's powerful automation feature, where you will have different methods available to parse data and manipulate regular expressions and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). After having explored automation, you will enter the extending PowerShell Core 6.0 module, covering asynchronous processing and desired state configuration. In the last module, you will learn to extend PowerShell Core 6.0 using advanced scripts and filters, and also debug issues along with working on error handling techniques. By the end of this book, you will be an expert in scripting with PowerShell Core 6.0.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Exploring PowerShell Fundamentals
6
Section 2: Working with Data
16
Section 3: Automating with PowerShell
19
Section 4: Extending PowerShell

Variables, Arrays, and Hashtables

This chapter explores variables, along with a detailed look at arrays and hashtables, as these have their own complexities.

A variable in a programming language allows you to assign a label to a piece of information or data. A variable can be used and reused in the console, script, or function or in any other piece of code.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following topics:

  • Naming and creating variables
  • Variable commands
  • Variable provider
  • Variable scope
  • Types and type conversion
  • Objects assigned to variables
  • Arrays
  • Hashtables
  • Lists, dictionaries, queues, and stacks

A variable may be of any .NET type or object instance. The variable may be a string Hello World, an integer 42, a decimal 3.141, an array, a hashtable, a ScriptBlock, and so on. Everything a variable might hold is considered to be an object when used in PowerShell.

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