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PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft , consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell , it was made open-source and cross-platform on 18 August with the introduction of PowerShell Core.
NET Framework while the latter on. In PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets pronounced command-lets , which are specialized. NET classes implementing a particular operation. These work by accessing data in different data stores, like the file system or registry , which are made available to PowerShell via providers. Third-party developers can develop their own cmdlets and add them to PowerShell. These applications can then use PowerShell functionality to implement certain operations, including those exposed via the graphical interface.
This capability has been used by Microsoft Exchange Server to expose its management functionality as PowerShell cmdlets and providers and implement the graphical management tools as PowerShell hosts which invoke the necessary cmdlets. PowerShell includes its own extensive, console-based help similar to man pages in Unix shells accessible via the Get-Help cmdlet. Local help contents can be retrieved from the Internet via Update-Help cmdlet.
Alternatively, help from the web can be acquired on a case-by-case basis via the -online switch to Get-Help. Every version of Microsoft Windows for personal computers has included a command line interpreter CLI for managing the operating system.
Both supports a few basic internal commands. For other purposes, a separate console application. They also include a basic scripting language batch files , which can be used to automate various tasks. However, they cannot be used to automate all facets of graphical user interface GUI functionality, in part because command-line equivalents of operations are limited, and the scripting language is elementary.
In Windows Server , the situation was improved, but scripting support was still unsatisfactory. Microsoft attempted to address some of these shortcomings by introducing the Windows Script Host in with Windows 98 , and its command-line based host: However, it has its own deficiencies: Different versions of Windows provided various special-purpose command line interpreters such as netsh and WMIC with their own command sets but they were not interoperable.
In an interview published September 13, Jeffrey Snover explained the motivation for the project: I'd been driving a bunch of managing changes, and then I originally took the UNIX tools and made them available on Windows, and then it just didn't work.
Because there's a core architectural difference between Windows and Linux. AWK , grep , sed? I brought those tools available on Windows, and then they didn't help manage Windows because in Windows, everything's an API that returns structured data. So, that didn't help. The ideas behind it were published in August in a white paper titled Monad Manifesto.
A private beta program began a few months later which eventually led to a public beta program. Microsoft published the first Monad public beta release on June 17, , Beta 2 on September 11, , and Beta 3 on January 10, Not much later, on April 25, Microsoft formally announced that Monad had been renamed Windows PowerShell , positioning it as a significant part of their management technology offerings.
A significant aspect of both the name change and the RC was that this was now a component of Windows, and not an add-on product. PowerShell for earlier versions of Windows was released on January 30, During the development, Microsoft shipped three community technology preview CTP. Microsoft made these releases available to the public. Windows 10 shipped a testing framework for PowerShell.
It is distinct from "Windows PowerShell", which runs on the full. Windows PowerShell can execute four kinds of named commands: If a command is a standalone executable program, PowerShell launches it in a separate process ; if it is a cmdlet, it executes in the PowerShell process.
PowerShell provides an interactive command-line interface , wherein the commands can be entered and their output displayed. The user interface, based on the Win32 console , offers customizable tab completion.
PowerShell enables the creation of aliases for cmdlets, which PowerShell textually translates into invocations of the original commands.
PowerShell supports both named and positional parameters for commands. In executing a cmdlet, the job of binding the argument value to the parameter is done by PowerShell itself, but for external executables, arguments are parsed by the external executable independently of PowerShell interpretation. NET type system, but with extended semantics for example, propertySets and third-party extensibility.
For example, it enables the creation of different views of objects by exposing only a subset of the data fields, properties, and methods, as well as specifying custom formatting and sorting behavior. These views are mapped to the original object using XML -based configuration files. Cmdlets are specialized commands in the PowerShell environment that implement specific functions.
These are the native commands in the PowerShell stack. Cmdlets follow a Verb - Noun naming pattern, such as Get-ChildItem , helping to make them self-descriptive.
If a cmdlet outputs multiple objects, each object in the collection is passed down through the entire pipeline before the next object is processed. NET classes , which the PowerShell runtime instantiates and invokes at run-time. Cmdlets derive either from Cmdlet or from PSCmdlet , the latter being used when the cmdlet needs to interact with the PowerShell runtime.
Whenever a cmdlet runs, PowerShell invokes these methods in sequence, with ProcessRecord being called if it receives pipeline input. The class implementing the Cmdlet must have one. NET attribute — CmdletAttribute — which specifies the verb and the noun that make up the name of the cmdlet. Common verbs are provided as an enum.
If a cmdlet receives either pipeline input or command-line parameter input, there must be a corresponding property in the class, with a mutator implementation. PowerShell invokes the mutator with the parameter value or pipeline input, which is saved by the mutator implementation in class variables.
These values are then referred to by the methods which implement the functionality. Properties that map to command-line parameters are marked by ParameterAttribute [28] and are set before the call to BeginProcessing. Those which map to pipeline input are also flanked by ParameterAttribute , but with the ValueFromPipeline attribute parameter set. The implementation of these cmdlet classes can refer to any.
In addition, PowerShell makes certain APIs available, such as WriteObject , which is used to access PowerShell-specific functionality, such as writing resultant objects to the pipeline. Data stores are exposed using drive letters, and hierarchies within them, addressed as directories. Windows PowerShell ships with providers for the file system , registry , the certificate store, as well as the namespaces for command aliases, variables, and functions.
Other applications can register cmdlets with PowerShell, thus allowing it to manage them, and, if they enclose any datastore such as databases , they can add specific providers as well. PowerShell V2 added a more portable version of Cmdlets called Modules. The PowerShell V2 release notes state:. Code from a module executes in its own self-contained context and does not affect the state outside of the module. Modules also enable you to define a restricted runspace environment by using a script.
PowerShell implements the concept of a pipeline , which enables piping the output of one cmdlet to another cmdlet as input. As with Unix pipelines , PowerShell pipelines can construct complex commands, using the operator to connect stages.
However, the PowerShell pipeline differs from Unix pipelines in that stages execute within the PowerShell runtime rather than as a set of processes coordinated by the operating system, and structured.
NET objects, rather than byte streams , are passed from one stage to the next. Using objects and executing stages within the PowerShell runtime eliminates the need to serialize data structures, or to extract them by explicitly parsing text output. Because all PowerShell objects are. NET objects, they share a. ToString method, which retrieves the text representation of the data in an object.
In addition, PowerShell allows formatting definitions to be specified, so the text representation of objects can be customized by choosing which data elements to display, and in what manner. However, in order to maintain backwards compatibility, if an external executable is used in a pipeline, it receives a text stream representing the object, instead of directly integrating with the PowerShell type system.
Windows PowerShell includes a dynamically typed scripting language which can implement complex operations using cmdlets imperatively. Variables can be assigned any value, including the output of cmdlets. Strings can be enclosed either in single quotes or in double quotes: If it is used as an L-value , anything assigned to it will be written to the file. When used as an R-value , the contents of the file will be read. If an object is assigned, it is serialized before being stored.
Object members can be accessed using. The PowerShell scripting language also evaluates arithmetic expressions entered on the command line immediately, and it parses common abbreviations, such as GB, MB, and KB. Using the function keyword, PowerShell provides for the creation of functions, the following general form: The defined function is invoked in either of the following forms: PowerShell supports named parameters, positional parameters, switch parameters and dynamic parameters.
NET methods to be called by providing their namespaces enclosed in brackets [] , and then using a pair of colons:: Objects are created using the New-Object cmdlet.
NET objects is accomplished by using the regular. PowerShell accepts strings , both raw and escaped. A string enclosed between single quotation marks is a raw string while a string enclosed between double quotation marks is an escaped string. PowerShell treats straight and curly quotes as equivalent. For error handling, PowerShell provides a.