PowerShell: Automating Administrative Tasks

Chapter 5. Formatting Output

So far, we are aware of PowerShell formatting the output of the commands that we execute, but we haven't spent any time on the particular ways that the output is formatted. That changes in this chapter. Now, we will learn all about the PowerShell formatting system and how we can take advantage of it. The topics covered in this chapter include the following:

• When does formatting occur?
• The rules of automatic formatting
• The cmdlets that control formatting
• The dangers of formatting
• The best practices of formatting

When does formatting occur?

The first thing to understand about PowerShell formatting is that the host you are in always formats the output. Remember that the host is the application (for example, the PowerShell console ...