Subscribe via RSSDo you have a moment? I think it’s time we had a little chat. No, no…you have done anything wrong. In fact, what I really need is your help. Because you are a member of the global PowerShell community, I felt I could talk to you. You do enjoy being a member of the community,…
Updated PowerShell Tools
I’ve released a new version of my popular PSScriptTools module, which you can install from the PowerShell Gallery. The module is collection of commands and tools that I use in my scripting and day-to-day work at a PowerShell console. Many of the commands run in Windows PowerShell and PowerShell 7, even on non-Windows systems. I…
Friday Fun – A PowerShell Nonsense Challenge
Today I thought I’d share my PowerShell solution to a recent Iron Scripter challenge. The challenge was to create PowerShell code that would create nonsense documents, with a goal of creating 10 sample files filled with gibberish. Yes, other than maybe wanting some test files to work with, on its face the challenge appears pointless. …
Doing More with Windows Sandbox
One of the reasons I was looking forward to updating to Windows 10 2004 was to have access to the Windows Sandbox feature. I think I tinkered with a pre-release version and was intrigued. I normally have a set of Hyper-V virtual machines that I can test with, but I’m always looking for something new…
Discovering Provider Specific Commands
I’ve been diving into PowerShell help lately while preparing my next Pluralsight course. One of the sad things I have discovered is the loss of provider-aware help. As you may know, some commands have parameters that only exist when using a specific PSDrive. For example, the -File parameter for Get-ChildItem only works in the file…
Updating PowerShell About Help
During some recent work, I realized my new Windows PowerShell 5.1 installs are missing the About help topics. Apparently, this is a known issue, although I don’t think it gets a lot of attention. Microsoft is working on improving updateable help for PowerShell 7 which I think will also have a beneficial change for Windows…
Answering the PowerShell Word to Phone Challenge
A few weeks ago, the Iron Scripter challenge was to write code to convert a short string into its numeric valuesusing the alphabet as it is laid out on a telephone. A number of solutions have already been shared in the comments on the original post. There are certainly a number of ways to meet…
Formatting PowerShell TimeSpans
I often will figure out how to do something and later struggle to remember how to do it a months later. Rather than trying to remember what piece of code I wrote, why not write about. Assuming I can remember! Anyway, here’s today’s “PSRemembery”. I often use code like this, and I expect many of…
An Expanded PowerShell Scripting Inventory Tool
The other day I shared my code that I worked up to solve an Iron Scripter PowerShell challenge. One of the shortcomings was that I didn’t address a challenge to include a property that would indicate what file was using a given command. I also felt I could do better with performance in Windows PowerShell…
Building a PowerShell Inventory
A few weeks ago, a new Iron Scripter PowerShell scripting challenge was issued. For this challenge we were asked to write some PowerShell code that we could use to inventory our PowerShell script library. Here’s how I approached the problem, which by no means is the only way. Lines of Code The first part of…
Solving the PowerShell Object Age Challenge – Part 2
The other day I shared part of my solution to an Iron Scripter challenge to write a generic function to report on the age of an object. The idea being that you could pipe any type of object to the function and get a result. And because I can’t help myself, I went a bit…
Solving the PowerShell Object Age Challenge – Part 1
A few weeks ago, the Iron Scripter site posted an interesting challenge about writing a generic function to get the age of objects. Many things that we deal with in PowerShell have an “age” such as files, processes or even AD groups and users. I think this is an especially useful exercise because it forces…
Show ANSI Samples
Earlier this week I did a live session for the PSPowerHour. I talked about ways to dress up your PowerShell work and console sessions. One of things I talked about was using ANSI escape sequences to add some color. What I realized was that I was constantly referring to my reference source at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code. That’s…
Solving the PowerShell Counting Challenge
A few weeks ago, an Iron Scripter PowerShell scripting challenge was posted. As with all of these challenges, the process is more important than the end result. How you figure out a solution is how you develop as a PowerShell professional. A few people have already shared their work. Today, I thought I’d share mine….
PowerShell Word Play
A few weeks ago an Iron Scripter PowerShell challenge was issued that involved playing with words and characters. Remember, the Iron Scripter challenges aren’t intended to create meaningful, production worthy code. They are designed to help you learn PowerShell fundamentals and scripting techniques. This particular challenge was aimed at beginner and intermediate experience levels. I…