Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Second Edition

Introduction to PowerShell

I write this as PowerShell approaches its 10th birthday since its release. PowerShell has come a long way since that time.

For me, PowerShell has gone from being a speculative replacement for a mixture of VBScript, C#, and Perl to a complex language with a great community.

This book is split into a number of sections. Much of the book is intended to act as a reference. We will cover the following topics in this book:

• Exploring PowerShell fundamentals
• Working with data
• Automating with PowerShell
• Extending PowerShell

In the first section of this book, while exploring the PowerShell fundamentals, we will look at the use of language and cover as many building blocks as possible.

In this chapter, we will briefly look ...