Category: Powershell

Phil Factor has a new cmdlet for us:

Whatever your development methodology, you need to make changes lightning fast, and the easiest way of doing that is to test frequently. If you are driving this work with PowerShell, which works well, you’ll want to compare the actual results of a process with the expected results. You’re keen to see what’s changed but will often have no idea what to look for beforehand. You need the broad view.

Fine. To do this, you need something that can tell you the differences between two objects. Yes, there is already a cmdlet to do that called Compare-Object. It is useful and ingenious, and works well for what is does, but it doesn’t do enough for our purposes. Let’s run through a few examples, just to explain why I need more for many of the things I do.

Read on to see where Compare-Object could be better and Phil’s solution to the problem.

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Robert Cain shows us the basics of functions in Powershell:

Like most languages, PowerShell supports the use of functions. Functions are reusable bits of code with a name wrapped around them. This lets you make multiple calls to your function name allowing you code reuse.

PowerShell actually has two types of functions, Basic and Advanced. Basic functions are a lot like the 1974 VW SuperBeetle I owned back in college. No frills but useful, gets you where you are going. Did 0 to 60 mph in under 5 minutes. Most of the time.

Advanced functions have a lot more capabilities, and are more akin to a Tesla. Lots of fancy design, can do cool things, and depending on your need might be worth the extra investment.

Robert’s post is all about those basic functions, so check it out.

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Robert Cain takes us through different structured programming constructs in Powershell:

Continuing my series on PowerShell basics, in this installment we’ll talk bout looping in PowerShell. Looping is a mechanism for repeating a set of instructions multiple times, ending once a condition is met. Looping is also known as iterating, as in “iterating over an array”.

Loops continue until one of two things happen. In one type of loop, the loop continues until a certain condition is true. In the second type, the loop will iterate over a collection (also called an array) of objects until the entire collection has been gone through.

Read on for an enumeration of the different types of loops you can create with this language.

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Robert Cain continues to have fun with Powershell:

In this post, we’ll see how some of PowerShell’s logic branching works. Logic branching is where you execute certain lines of code only when a condition is true.

For all of the examples, we’ll display the code, then under it the result of our code. In this article I’ll be using PowerShell Core, 7.1.3, and VSCode. The examples should work in PowerShell 5.1 in the PowerShell IDE, although they’ve not been tested there.

As always, Robert has a large number of examples here to illuminate the process.

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Robert Cain continues a series on Powershell data structures:

Hash tables are powerful, flexible items. In some languages, hash tables are also called dictionaries. In this post we’ll start with a few basics, then get into some fun things you can do with hash tables.

A quick note, some documentation calls them a hash table, others read hashtable, one word. For this post I’ll use the two word hash table, but it’s the same thing no matter what documentation or blog you read.

Click through for plenty of examples of what you can do with them.

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Robert Cain looks at how arrays operate in Powershell:

In this article, we’ll look at the different ways to use Arrays in PowerShell. We’ll cover the basics, then move onto more advanced topics.

For all of the examples, we’ll display the code, then under it the result of our code. In this article I’ll be using PowerShell Core, 7.1.3, and VSCode. The examples should work in PowerShell 5.1 in the PowerShell IDE, although they’ve not been tested there.

Click through for a variety of tips and tricks when working with arrays.

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Robert Cain continues a series on fun with Powershell and strings:

Specifically, this can control the output when we embed a numeric value inside a string. Passing in special formatting instructions will make it easy to display values with commas, as currency, or even as hexidecimal.

For all of the examples, we’ll display the code, then under it the result of our code. In this article I’ll be using PowerShell Core, 7.1.3, and VSCode. The examples should work in PowerShell 5.1 in the PowerShell IDE, although they’ve not been tested there.

Robert has quite a few examples, so check them out.

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