Powershell For Beginners : Introduction to Windows powershell

Powershell is a scripting and automation platform for Miscrosoft platform which is built on top of .Net framework. it is useful for system tasks automation, system administration etc. on windows systems. Powershell is basically a replacement of Command Prompt (cmd.exe) on windows based systems.

Powershell borrowed a lot of functionality and commands from the Linux environment including many Linux commands. For example the ability to pipe commands and link commands into a script.

The cmdlets or commandlets are single commands that accomplish (sometimes) more complex tasks similer to functions. cmdlets follow verb-noun pattern, for example “get-help“. This help users understand the purpose of the commands. Verbs include New, Set, Get, Add and Copy. Microsoft has a documented list of approved verbs and their intended uses to help maintain consistency throughout the platform. When placed together with nouns, you get cmdlets such as:

• Get-Help
• Get-Process
• Write-Output

Opening Powershell window : Goto search bar and type powershell and then you have powershell interpreter.

Now lets see some examples :

• Get-Help : Get-help cmdlets shows the help page about a command or cmdlet. It is basically works like man command of linux terminal.

Get-Help <cmdlet-name>

Example :

Get-Help write-Output

The write-Output command is similar to echo command. It has also alias for echo, write.

• Get-Process : Lists all the processes.

Get-Process

Some Resources for Cmdlets :

• Cmdlets Documentation
• Writing cmdlets

PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment :

Windows (7, 8, 10..) has an integrated IDE pre-installed called Powershell ISE to write and run Powershell script. It also has a help tab which lists all the cmdlets with details. To open Powershell ISE type “Powershell ISE” on search bar and open the app.

The example use of powershell ISE

Running a Powershell script :

To run a powershell script right click on script and click “Run with Powershell”.

Some Common Commands/Cmdlets used in Powershell :

Commandlets	alias	Description
Get-Location	pwd,gl	shows current working directory
Get-Help	help,man	Show help page of commands
get-Content	cat,type,gc	Get the content of a file
Get-Command	gcm	List all the commands
Get-Childitem	ls,dir,gci	list all contents in directory
Clear-Host	clear,cls	clear screen
Copy-Item	copy,cp,cpi	copy file/directories
Move-Item	mi,move,mv	move files/directories
Remove-Item	ri,del,rd,rm,rmdir	remove file/directories
rename-Item	rni,ren,mv	rename file/directories
Set-Location	cd,chdir,sl	change directory
Push-Location	pushd	Push current directory location on stack
Pop-Location	popd	Change directory to currently pushed location
Tee-Object	tee	Pipe standard input into file and standard output stream
Write-Object	echo,write	print string, variables to standard output
Get-Process	ps,gps	list all the processes
Stop-Process	kill,spps	stop a running process
Select-String	sls	Print line matching a pattern(similar to grep)
Set-Variable	sv,set	Set the value of a variable/create a variable
Invoke-WebRequest	iwr,curl,wget	Gets content from web page on the internet

Now in next blogposts we are going to look at the basic powershell scripting concepts and methods.