Windows Powershell

For any windows task, PowerShell is usually the go to language. You probably already have it installed, it’s usually fast enough for scripting tasks, and it has a lot of built-in functionality for us Windows folks. I have used it at work to automate tasks, to create tools to install software, and manage user’s environment variables.

Variables §

In PS, we do not need to declare the variables before using them. We also do not need to give the variables a type.

$a = 1
$b = "Hello World"
$c = $True
$d = Get-Date

How to Print §

Write-Output Hello World!
 
$name = "David"
Write-Output "My name is $($name)"

Conditional Statements §

These are typical if/else code blocks

$number = 5
if($number -gt 10) {
	Write-Output "The number is greater than 10."
} elseif ($number -eq 10) {
	Write-Output "The number is equal to 10."
} else {
	Write-Output "The number is less than 10."
}

• -gt, greater than
• -ge, greater than or equal to
• -lt, less than
• -le, less than or equal to
• -eq, equal to
• -ne, not equal to

Loops §

Here is how to do some common loops in PS.

# loop n number of times
for ($i=1; $i -le 5; $i++) {
	Write-Output "Iteration $i"
}
 
# loop using an array
$MODULES = "a", "b", "c"
 
foreach($MODULE in $MODULES){
	Write-Host $MODULE
}

Functions §

Here are a few ways to declare functions in PS

# functions with no parameters
def myFunction() {
	# function code
}
 
# function with a return
def myFunction() {
	return "Hellow World"
}
 
# function with parameters
def myFunction($CONFIG) {
	return $CONFIG"
}

Exception Handling §

try {
	# do something
} catch {
	Write-Output "An error occurred: $_"
}