How do you use PowerShell to navigate the filesystem, manage files and folders, or retrieve a web page? This introduction to the PowerShell language and scripting environment provides more than 400 task-oriented recipes to help you solve all kinds of problems. Intermediate to advanced system administrators will find more than 100 tried-and-tested scripts they can copy and use immediately.

Updated for PowerShell 5.1 and Open Source PowerShell up to 7.0 and beyond, this comprehensive cookbook includes hands-on recipes for common tasks and administrative jobs that you can apply whether you're on the client or server version of Windows. You also get quick references to technologies used in conjunction with PowerShell, including regular expressions, the XPath language, format specifiers, and frequently referenced .NET, COM, and WMI classes.

• Learn how to use PowerShell on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019
• Tour PowerShell's core features, including the command model, object-based pipeline, and ubiquitous scripting
• Master fundamentals such as the interactive shell, pipeline, and object concepts
• Perform common tasks that involve working with files, internet-connected scripts, user interaction, and more
• Solve tasks in systems and enterprise management, such as working with Active Directory and the filesystem

Complimentary Online Access! As an additional incredible benefit, owners of the PowerShell Cookbook get free, perpetual, searchable, online access to the book at powershellcookbook.com.

Who This Book Is For?

This book helps you use PowerShell to get things done. It contains hundreds of solutions to specific, real-world problems. For systems management, you’ll find plenty of examples that show how to manage the filesystem, the Windows Registry, event logs, processes, and more. For enterprise administration, you’ll find two entire chapters devoted to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Active Directory, and other enterprise-focused tasks.

Along the way, you’ll also learn an enormous amount about PowerShell: its features, its commands, and its scripting language—but most importantly, you’ll solve problems.

What You Need to Use This Book

The majority of this book requires only a working installation of PowerShell. All supported versions of Windows (Windows 7 and beyond, as well as Windows Server 2012 and beyond) include Windows PowerShell by default.

A significant step up from this default installation, however, is the open source PowerShell Core. You can learn more about upgrading to PowerShell Core (or simply PowerShell) in Recipe 1.1.

The Active Directory scripts given in Chapter 26 are most useful when applied to an enterprise environment, but Recipe 26.1 shows how to install additional software (Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services, or Active Directory Application Mode) that lets you run these scripts against a local installation.

Review

"Lee is one of the key forces behind PowerShell, and a cornerstone of the PowerShell community. His pragmatic problem solving approach resulted in many of PowerShell's most successful features. It is this approach that earns this book a place on my desktop and why it should be on every PowerShell user's desktop as well." - Jeffrey Snover, Inventor, PowerShell

"Lee's book fills in one of the biggest gaps in the PowerShell library. While there are many books (including mine) that talk about PowerShell itself, this the first book that really focuses on applying PowerShell, providing a cookbook of practical solutions for real-world problems. This is definitely one of the two books that everyone should have on their shelf." - Bruce Payette, Co-designer of the PowerShell languages and author of Windows PowerShell in Action

"It is very clear that Lee has a profound knowledge of the inner workings of PowerShell beyond that which most of us ever will ourselves. This book is a treasure trove of tips and tricks that are certain to help any IT Support, Systems Administrator, Network Engineer, Cloud Engineer, Security Engineer, and more in taking their PowerShell skills to the next level." - David Frazer, Security Engineer, Segra

"In the PowerShell world, this book is equivalent to Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. You'll want to try and master all recipes." - Aleksandar Nikolić, PowerShell Magazine

Table of Contents

Part I. Tour

A Guided Tour of PowerShell

Part II. Fundamentals

Chapter 1. The PowerShell Interactive Shell

Chapter 2. Pipelines

Chapter 3. Variables and Objects

Chapter 4. Looping and Flow Control

Chapter 5. Strings and Unstructured Text

Chapter 6. Calculations and Math

Chapter 7. Lists, Arrays, and Hashtables

Chapter 8. Utility Tasks

Part III. Common Tasks

Chapter 9. Simple Files

Chapter 10. Structured Files

Chapter 11. Code Reuse

Chapter 12. Internet-Enabled Scripts

Chapter 13. User Interaction

Chapter 14. Debugging

Chapter 15. Tracing and Error Management

Chapter 16. Environmental Awareness

Chapter 17. Extend the Reach of PowerShell

Chapter 18. Security and Script Signing

Chapter 19. Visual Studio Code

Part IV. Administrator Tasks

Chapter 20. Files and Directories

Chapter 21. The Windows Registry

Chapter 22. Comparing Data

Chapter 23. Event Logs

Chapter 24. Processes

Chapter 25. System Services

Chapter 26. Active Directory

Chapter 27. Enterprise Computer Management

Chapter 28. CIM and Windows Management Instrumentation

Chapter 29. Remoting

Chapter 30. Transactions

Chapter 31. Event Handling

Part V. References

Appendix A. PowerShell Language and Environment

Appendix B. Regular Expression Reference

Appendix C. XPath Quick Reference

Appendix D. .NET String Formatting

Appendix E. .NET DateTime Formatting

Appendix F. Selected .NET Classes and Their Uses

Appendix G. WMI Reference

Appendix H. Selected COM Objects and Their Uses

Appendix I. Selected Events and Their Uses

Appendix J. Standard PowerShell Verbs

About the Author

Lee Holmes is a security architect in Azure Security, an original developer on the PowerShell team, and has been an authoritative source of information about PowerShell since its earliest betas. His vast experience with both world-scale security and operational management--and PowerShell itself--give him the background to integrate both the "how" and the "why" into discussions. You can find him on Twitter (@Lee_Holmes), as well as his personal site (leeholmes.com).