Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Fourth Edition

Appendix. PowerShell cheat sheet

This is our opportunity to assemble a lot of the little gotchas into a single place. If you’re ever having trouble remembering what something is or does, flip to this appendix first.

A.1 Punctuation

PowerShell is full of punctuation, and much of it has a different meaning in the help files than it does in the shell itself. Here’s what it all means within the shell:

• Backtick (`)—PowerShell’s escape character. It removes the special meaning of any character that follows it. For example, a space is normally a separator, which is why cd c:\Program Files generates an error. Escaping the space, cd c:\Program` Files, removes that special meaning and forces the space to be treated as a literal, so the command works. ...