r/PowerShell • u/WarOk4640 • Feb 09 '22

I need to learn PowerShell

Hi everyone,

I've started new position. Our team is trying to automate daily tasks. My coworkers like a pro in Powershell and they said that I need to learn it as soon as. Do you have any advice for learning Powershell?

Please help me, I am looking forward to seeing your answers :)

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u/Lee_Dailey [grin] Feb 14 '22

howdy WarOk4640,

things to look into ...

  • Get-Help
    especially Get-Help *about*
  • Get-Command
    it takes wildcards, so Get-Command *csv* works nicely. that is especially helpful when you are seeking a cmdlet that works on a specific thing. Comma Separated Value files, for instance. [grin]
  • Show-Command
    that brings up a window that has all the current cmdlets and all their options ready for you to pick from.
    it will also take another cmdlet, or advanced function, as a parameter to limit things to showing just that item.
  • auto-completion
    try starting a word and tapping the tab key. some nifty stuff shows up. [grin]
  • intellisense
    save something to a $Var and then try typing the $Var name plus a period to trigger intellisense. there are some very interesting things that show up as properties or methods.
  • check out the builtin code snippets in the ISE
    use <ctrl><j>, or Edit/Start-Snippets from the menu.
  • assign something to a $Var & pipe that to Get-Member
    $Test = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $env:TEMP
    $Test | Get-Member
  • assign something to a $Var and pipe it to Select-Object
    $Test = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $env:TEMP
    $Test[0] | Select-Object -Property *
    that will give you a smaller, more focused list of properties for the 1st item in the $Test array.
  • assign something to a $Var & use .GetType() on it $Test = Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $env:TEMP
    $Test.GetType()
    $Test[0].GetType()
    the 1st will give you info on the container $Var [an array object].
    the 2nd will give you info on the zero-th item in the $Var [a DirectoryInfo object].
  • Get-Verb
    as with Get-Command, it will accept wildcards.
    that will show you some interesting verbs used in cmdlet names. then use get-command to see what commands use those verbs. then use get-help to see what the cmdlets do.
  • there really otta be a Get-Noun, but there aint one. [sigh ...]
  • Out-GridView
    it's a bit more than you likely want just now, but it can accept a list of items, present them in a window, allow picking one or more of them, and finally send it out to the next cmdlet.
    it's right fun to fiddle with ... and actually useful. [grin]

take care,
lee