PowerShell Core for Linux Administrators Cookbook

Getting ready

Ensure that you are at a location that has a few files. List out the contents of the current directory and count the number of items returned. If the number is less than 5, you may want to consider adding more items to the directory. Follow these steps to get started:

1. Enter the following command to count the number of files and directories at the current path:

PS> (Get-ChildItem -Path .).Count

2. If you would like to reduce keystrokes, given that we are only running commands at the terminal, you could use the alias and the defaults of the cmdlet:

PS> (gci).Count

Those parentheses are required; the parentheses work similar to how they work in mathematics: the instruction within the parentheses is processed first. In this case, ...