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

Naming and creating variables

Variables in PowerShell are preceded by the dollar symbol ($), for example:

$MyVariable

The name of a variable may contain numbers, letters, and underscores. For example, each of the following is a valid name:

$123 
$x 
$my_variable 
$variable 
$varIABle 
$Path_To_File 

Variables are frequently written in either camel case or upper-camel case (also known as Pascal case). PowerShell doesn't enforce any naming convention, nor does it exhibit a convention in any of the automatic variables. For example:

  • $myVariable is camel case
  • $MyVariable is upper-camel case, or Pascal case

One of the most commonly accepted practices is that variables used as parameters must use Pascal case. Variables used only within a script or a function must use camel case.

I suggest making your variable names meaningful so that when you revisit your script again after a...