Windows Powershell in Action

PowerShell replaces cobbled-together assemblies of third-party management tools with an elegant programming language and a powerful scripting shell for the Windows environment. In the tradition of Manning’s ground breaking “In Action” series, this book comes from right from the source. Written by Bruce Payette, one of principal creators of PowerShell, Windows PowerShell in Action shows you how to build scripts and utilities to automate system tasks or create powerful system management tools to handle the day-to-day tasks that drive a Windows administrator’s life. Because it’s based on the .NET platform, PowerShell is also a powerful tool for developers and power users.

Windows PowerShell in Action was written by Bruce Payette, one of the founding members of the Windows PowerShell team, co-designer of the PowerShell language and the principal author of the PowerShell language implementation. The book enables you to get the most out of the PowerShell environment. Using many examples, both small and large, this book illustrates the features of the language and environment and shows how to compose those features into solutions, quickly and effectively.

This book is designed for anyone who wants to learn PowerShell and use it well. Rather than simply being a book of recipes to read and apply, this book gives you the deep knowledge about how PowerShell works and how to apply it.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Learning PowerShell
Chapter 1. Welcome to PowerShell
Chapter 2. The basics
Chapter 3. Working with types
Chapter 4. Operators and expressions
Chapter 5. Advanced operators and variables
Chapter 6. Flow control in scripts
Chapter 7. Functions and scripts
Chapter 8. Scriptblocks and objects
Chapter 9. Errors, exceptions, and script debugging

Part 2 Using PowerShell
Chapter 10. Processing text, files, and XML
Chapter 11. Getting fancy- .NET and WinForms
Chapter 12. Windows objects: COM and WMI
Chapter 13. Security, security, security

appendix A: Comparing PowerShell to other languages
appendix B: Admin examples
appendix C: The PowerShell grammar