PowerShell (and cmd by the way)

Knowledge, commands, configurations, guides and everything helpful when working with PowerShell in Windows.

Basics

Comments

• #
  • Use hashtag for comments in PowerShell

Get-Item

Primarily used to retrieve a specific item at a given location like: file, folder, registry key (or other objects supported by PowerShell providers).

• Get-Item .
  • Get object of current directory
• gi .
  • Shortcut for Get-Item

Set Output

Out-File (bash >)

dir | Out-File -FilePath .\output.txt

Copy file

Copy-Item (bash cp)

• Path - specify source
• Destination - specify target
• Include - specify file filter
• Recurse - invoke recursively (bash -r)
• Force - always overwrite (bash -f)
• Confirm - prompts before running the cmdlet
• PassThru - return an object (and by the way e.g. its path)

Copy-Item `
  -Path "./source/directory/*" `
  -Destination "./target/directory" `
  -Include "*.jar" `
  -Recurse `
  -Confirm `
  -PassThru

Remove file

Remove-Item (bash rm)

Remove-Item ./file.txt

String interpolation

$VERSION = "2.1.1-SNAPSHOT"
$jarFile = "myapp-$VERSION.jar"

Download File

Invoke-WebRequest (bash curl)

• $ProgressPreference = 'SilentlyContinue' - Disable progress bar

Invoke-WebRequest localhost:8080/archive.zip -OutFile ./logs.zip

Alternative

iwr localhost:8080/archive.zip -o logs.zip

Various

Check if file exists

if (Test-Path -Path $TARGET_FILE -PathType Leaf)
{
    # ...
}

Environmental Variables (envs)

Show Env

# Short way
$env:EnvName

# Full way
[System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("VariableName", "User")

Show Envs

# Available scopes: User, Machine, Process
[System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables([System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User)

Show Envs by name

# Normal way
Get-Item env:EnvName*

# Shortcut way
gi env:EnvName*

Set Env (temporarily)

# Replace variable
$env:VariableName = "VariableValue"

# Append variable
$env:VariableName += ";VariableValue"

# Add to the beginning
$env:VariableName = 'VariableValue;' + $env:VariableName 

Set Env (permanently)

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable('VariableName','VariableValue')

Shell behavior config

Enable debugging

Set-PSDebug -Trace 1 (bash set -x)

Stop execution on first error

$ErrorActionPreference (bash set -e)

$ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"

PowerShell Profile

Get location of PowerShell Profile

• Note that this location actually may not contain any file - in such case it will be needed to create it manually

$PROFILE

Create PowerShell Profile if not exist

• Creates Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 file

New-Item -path $PROFILE -type File -force

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Command Prompt (cmd)

Set variable

set VariableName = VariableValue

Set env

setx VariableName VariableValue /m