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Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Second Edition

By : Chris Dent, Brenton J.W. Blawat

3.3 (8)

Buy this Book

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting

3.3 (8)

By: Chris Dent, Brenton J.W. Blawat

Buy this Book

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.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Introduction to PowerShell

What is PowerShell?

Quick reference

PowerShell editors

PowerShell on Linux

Summary

Working with PowerShell

Getting help

Command naming and discovery

Parameters and parameter sets

Providers

Summary

Modules and Snap-Ins

What is a module?

What is the PowerShell Gallery?

The Get-Module command

The Import-Module command

The Remove-Module command

The Find-Module command

The Install-Module command

The Save-Module command

What is a snap-in?

Using snap-ins

Summary

Working with Objects in PowerShell

Pipelines

Members

Enumerating and filtering

Selecting and sorting

Grouping and measuring

Comparing

Importing, exporting, and converting

Summary

Operators

Arithmetic operators

Assignment operators

Comparison operators

Regular-expression-based operators

Binary operators

Logical operators

Type operators

Redirection operators

Other operators

Summary

Variables, Arrays, and Hashtables

Naming and creating variables

Variable commands

Variable scope

Type and type conversion

Objects assigned to variables

Arrays

Hashtables

Lists, dictionaries, queues, and stacks

Summary

Branching and Looping

Conditional statements

Loops

Summary

Working with .NET

Assemblies

Namespaces

Types

Classes

Constructors

Properties and methods

Static properties

Static methods

Non-public classes

Type accelerators

Using

Summary

Data Parsing and Manipulation

String manipulation

Converting strings

Number manipulation

Converting strings to numeric values

Date and time manipulation

Summary

Regular Expressions

Regex basics

Anchors

Repetition

Character classes

Alternation

Grouping

Examples of regular expressions

Summary

Files, Folders, and the Registry

Working with providers

Items

Item properties

Permissions

Transactions

File catalogs

Summary

Windows Management Instrumentation

Working with WMI

CIM cmdlets

The WMI cmdlets

Permissions

Summary

HTML, XML, and JSON

HTML

XML

System.Xml

System.Xml.Linq

JSON

Summary

Working with REST and SOAP

Web requests

Working with REST

Working with SOAP

Summary

Remoting and Remote Management

WS-Management

CIM sessions

PS sessions

The double-hop problem

Summary

Testing

Static analysis

Testing with Pester

Summary

Error Handling

Error types

Error action

Raising errors

Catching errors

Summary

Introduction to PowerShell

I write this as PowerShell approaches its 10th birthday since its release. PowerShell has come a long way since that time.

For me, PowerShell has gone from being a speculative replacement for a mixture of VBScript, C#, and Perl to a complex language with a great community.

This book is split into a number of sections. Much of the book is intended to act as a reference. We will cover the following topics in this book:

Exploring PowerShell fundamentals
Working with data
Automating with PowerShell
Extending PowerShell

In the first section of this book, while exploring the PowerShell fundamentals, we will look at the use of language and cover as many building blocks as possible.

In this chapter, we will briefly look at a number of short, diverse topics: