Book Image

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting (Second Edition) - Second Edition

By : Brenton J.W. Blawat
Book Image

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting (Second Edition) - Second Edition

By: Brenton J.W. Blawat

Overview of this book

PowerShell scripts offer a handy way to automate various chores. Working with these scripts effectively can be a difficult task. This comprehensive guide starts from scratch and covers advanced-level topics to make you a PowerShell expert. The first module, PowerShell Fundamentals, begins with new features, installing PowerShell on Linux, working with parameters and objects, and also how you can work with .NET classes from within PowerShell. In the next module, you’ll see how to efficiently manage large amounts of data and interact with other services using PowerShell. You’ll be able to make the most of PowerShell’s powerful automation feature, where you will have different methods to parse and manipulate data, regular expressions, and WMI. After automation, you will enter the Extending PowerShell module, which covers topics such as asynchronous processing and, creating modules. The final step is to secure your PowerShell, so you will land in the last module, Securing and Debugging PowerShell, which covers PowerShell execution policies, error handling techniques, and testing. By the end of the book, you will be an expert in using the PowerShell language.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

What is a module?


Modules were introduced with the release of PowerShell version 2.0. Modules represented a significant step forward over snap-ins. Unlike snap-ins, modules do not have to be formally installed or registered for use with PowerShell.

It is most common to find a module that targets a specific system or focuses on a small set of related operations. For example, the Microsoft.PowerShell.LocalAccounts module contains commands for interacting with the local account database (users and groups).

A module may be binary, script, dynamic, or manifest:

  • Binary module: This is written in a language, such as C# or VB.NET, and then compiled into a library (DLL)
  • Script module: This is a collection of functions written in the PowerShell language. The commands typically reside in a script module file (PSM1)
  • Dynamic module: This does not have files associated with it. This is created using the New-Module command. The following command creates a very simple dynamic module that adds the Get-Number...