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

The using keyword

The using keyword was introduced with PowerShell 5.0. The using keyword may be used in a script, a module, or in the console.

The using keyword does a number of different things. It can import and declare the following:

  • Assemblies
  • Modules
  • Namespaces

In the context of working with .NET, assemblies, and namespaces are of particular interest.

Future plans for the using command look to include aliasing, as well as support for type and command objects. For example, we might expect the following to work in the future:

using namespace NetInfo = System.Net.NetworkInformation 

At this time, however, this statement will fail with a not supported error.

Using assemblies

If an assembly is listed in the using statement...