Windows Server® 2012 Unleashed

Providers and Drives

Most computer systems are used to store data, often in a structure such as a file system. Because of the amount of data stored in these structures, processing and finding information can be unwieldy. Most shells have interfaces, or providers, for interacting with data stores in a predictable, set manner. PowerShell also has a set of providers for presenting the contents of data stores through a core set of cmdlets. You can then use these cmdlets to browse, navigate, and manipulate data from stores through a common interface. To get a list of the core cmdlets, use the following command:

PS C:\> help about_core_commands...    ChildItem CMDLETS    Get-ChildItem    CONTENT CMDLETS    Add-Content    Clear-Content    Get-Content ...