Most die-hard command-line fans tend to agree that the Windows Command Prompt isn’t great. When you consider how old it is, it isn’t all that powerful. This isn’t the end of the world, as there is always cygwin.
But now Microsoft have released their new command prompt PowerShell. I tried downloading it this evening, and so far, I really like it.
I heard of PowerShell last year when Ars Technica published a walkthrough on it while it was still in beta. But I hadn’t got round to giving it a try. Actually, despite it’s age, the Ars Technica guide is still the best introduction I’ve found, so if you want to know more about PowerShell is all about, it’s worth a look.
Some of my favourite features so far:
——
Access the Registry in the same way as files
PS C:\\>
PS C:\\> Get-PSDrive
Name Provider Root CurrentLocation
---- -------- ---- ---------------
Alias Alias
C FileSystem C:\\
cert Certificate \\
Env Environment
Function Function
HKCU Registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER
HKLM Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Variable Variable
W FileSystem W:\\
X FileSystem X:\\
Y FileSystem Y:\\
Z FileSystem Z:\\
PS C:\\> cd HKLM:
PS HKLM:\\> cd SOFTWARE\\IBM\\MQSeries\\CurrentVersion\\Configuration\\
PS HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\IBM\\MQSeries\\CurrentVersion\\Configuration> dir
Hive: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\\Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\IBM\\MQ
Series\\CurrentVersion\\Configuration
SKC VC Name Property
--- -- ---- --------
0 1 ACPI {DoDialog}
0 1 AlertMonitor {Startup}
0 1 AllQueueManagers {DefaultPrefix}
0 1 ClientExitPath {ExitsDefaultPath}
0 4 DefaultConfiguration {V2_MachineName, V2_MQQMName, V2_Mach...
0 6 LogDefaults {LogDefaultPath, LogPrimaryFiles, Log...
3 0 QueueManager {}
4 0 Services {}
0 0 Trace {}
0 1 WebAdministration {Trace}
You can also access system certificates, environment variables, and more in the same way. Very cool!
——
SQL-type syntax
No more fighting with awk to get bits that I want out of command output! Instead of returning strings, PowerShell is object-oriented, and you can run a variety of commands with the returned objects.
For example…
PS C:\\MyFolder\\src> Get-ChildItem | select name
Name
----
amqssl.h
amqsslchk.c
amqsslchk.exe
amqsslcon.c
amqsslenv.c
amqsslerr.c
amqsslgsk.c
amqsslikm.c
amqsslpcf.c
amqsslper.c
amqsslutl.c
amqsslwmq.c
compile.bat
compile_with_ikeyman.bat
linux_compile.sh
solaris_build.sh
PS C:\\MyFolder\\src> Get-ChildItem | select name, extension
Name Extension
---- ---------
amqssl.h .h
amqsslchk.c .c
amqsslchk.exe .exe
amqsslcon.c .c
amqsslenv.c .c
amqsslerr.c .c
amqsslgsk.c .c
amqsslikm.c .c
amqsslpcf.c .c
amqsslper.c .c
amqsslutl.c .c
amqsslwmq.c .c
compile.bat .bat
compile_with_ikeyman.bat .bat
linux_compile.sh .sh
solaris_build.sh .sh
PS C:\\MyFolder\\src> Get-ChildItem | select name, extension | sort-object extension
Name Extension
---- ---------
compile_with_ikeyman.bat .bat
compile.bat .bat
amqsslper.c .c
amqsslpcf.c .c
amqsslwmq.c .c
amqsslutl.c .c
amqsslenv.c .c
amqsslcon.c .c
amqsslchk.c .c
amqsslikm.c .c
amqsslgsk.c .c
amqsslerr.c .c
amqsslchk.exe .exe
amqssl.h .h
solaris_build.sh .sh
linux_compile.sh .sh
There is lots more you can do, but if you’re familiar with the sort of FOR, WHILE, SELECT and so on in SQL, then you’ll be in familiar territory. It’s really nice.
——
You can use .NET API
There are lots of nice bits of functionality in .NET, and now you can access them interactively at the command-line. For example:
PS C:\\> ([xml](new-object Net.WebClient).DownloadString("http://dalelane.co.
uk/blog/?feed=rss2")).rss.channel.item | select title
title
-----
I can be a C-numptie
Maintaining two blogs is difficult
wii!
The differences between men and women
winter has arrived
Using Scheduled Tasks and batch files to do automatic backups
Young people make a massive contribution to society
What IET members do in the evenings
The etch-a-sketch approach to legislationYou can use pretty much any function in a .NET library, so even GUIs can be created on-the-fly at the command-line:
PS C:\\> [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Windows.Forms")
GAC Version Location
--- ------- --------
True v2.0.50727 C:\\WINDOWS\\assembly\\GAC_MSIL\\System.Windows.Forms\\2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e08...
PS C:\\> $window = new-object Windows.Forms.Form
PS C:\\> $window.text = "This is a Windows form!"
PS C:\\> $button = new-object Windows.Forms.Button
PS C:\\> $button.text = "Click me!"
PS C:\\> $window.controls.add($button)
PS C:\\> $window.showDialog()and up pops a window with a button on it!
——
I’ve still got more to learn, but I’ve already started to knock together some very powerful scripts. If you’ve ever found the Windows Command Prompt a bit limited, I’d recommend you download it and have a play.
Other PowerShell resources that I found useful are tagged on my del.icio.us bookmarks
This is very cool, I’ve been following the development of PowerShell for a while.
The thing that put me off from installing it was the ominous “back up your entire system before proceeding” message!
The syntax looks a bit scary, but I hope to get used to it, once I can bring myself to install.
This does look very powerful. The one thing I would pick out from your examples is that commands look very verbose. I’m the first one to demand long, descriptive variable and method names in actual code, but on the commandline where almost everything is a throwaway one-liner I would rather have less to type. It looks like “Get-ChildItem” is the Powershell equivalent of “ls”, and I know which one I’d rather type 100 times a day. Hopefully the existing DOS commands work too, so for this example I could type “dir” if I wanted. But I’m sure there are many cases where this does not apply.
Overall though, kudos to Microsoft for coming up with something like this.
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This helped me in one of my projects. You rock!