Chapter 1. PowerShell fundamentals

This chapter covers

  • Using cmdlets and providers
  • PowerShell’s building blocks
  • Learning the pipeline

Microsoft seems to be always talking about PowerShell. Listen to a talk about Exchange Server 2007 or 2010, Windows Server 2008 R2 (release 2), or even SQL Server 2008, and PowerShell will be mentioned. PowerShell gets its own section on the Microsoft scripting center and there is a stack of books on the subject. So what’s PowerShell and why are so many people excited about it? This chapter introduces PowerShell and answers some of those basic questions. It is formally known as Microsoft Windows PowerShell but that is too much of a mouthful so we will refer to it as PowerShell from now on. In this chapter ...

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