Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches: Covers Windows, Linux, and macOS 4th Edition, ISBN-13: 978-1617296963

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Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches: Covers Windows, Linux, and macOS 4th Edition, ISBN-13: 978-1617296963

[PDF eBook eTextbook] – Available Instantly

• Publisher: ‎ Manning
• Publication date: ‎ April 26, 2022
• Edition: ‎ 4th
• Language: ‎ English
• 360 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 1617296961
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1617296963

Designed for busy IT professionals, this innovative guide will take you from the basics to PowerShell proficiency through 25 tutorials you can do in your lunch break.

In Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Fourth Edition you will learn:

Discoverability with the Help system

Background jobs and automation techniques

Simple scripting to automate repetitive tasks

Managing cloud services from major cloud providers

Extending PowerShell with commands

Common syntax and commands cheat sheet

Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Fourth Edition is a task-focused guide for administering your systems using PowerShell. It covers core language features and admin tasks, with each chapter a mini-tutorial you can easily complete in under an hour. Discover how PowerShell works on different operating systems, and start automating tasks so they take just a few seconds to complete. No previous scripting experience required.

The book is based on the bestselling Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches by community legends Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks. PowerShell team members Travis Plunk and Tyler Leonhardt and Microsoft MVP James Petty have updated this edition to the latest version of PowerShell, including its multi-platform expansion into Linux and macOS.

Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications.

About the technology

PowerShell gives you complete command line control over admin tasks like adding users, exporting data, and file management. Whether you’re writing one-liners or building complex scripts to manage cloud resources and CI/CD pipelines, PowerShell can handle the task. And now that PowerShell is truly cross-platform, you don’t have to switch scripting languages when you move between Windows, Linux, and macOS.

About the book

Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Fourth Edition is a new edition of the bestseller that introduced PowerShell to over 100,000 readers. With bite-sized lessons and hands-on exercises, this amazing book guides you from your first command to writing and debugging reusable scripts for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Set aside just an hour a day and you’ll soon be tackling increasingly complex automation tasks with PowerShell.

What’s inside

Discoverability with the Help system

PowerShell on macOS and Linux

Background jobs and automation techniques

Managing cloud services from major cloud providers

Common syntax and commands cheat sheet

About the reader

No previous experience with PowerShell or Bash required.

Table of Contents:

Copyright

brief contents

contents

Front matter

foreword

preface

acknowledgments

about this book

Who should read this book

About the code

liveBook discussion forum

about the authors

1 Before you begin

1.1 Why you can no longer afford to ignore PowerShell

1.1.1 Life without PowerShell

1.1.2 Life with PowerShell

1.2 Windows, Linux, and macOS, oh my

1.3 Is this book for you?

1.4 How to use this book

1.4.1 The chapters

1.4.2 Hands-on labs

1.4.3 Supplementary materials

1.4.4 Further exploration

1.4.5 Above and beyond

1.5 Setting up your lab environment

1.6 Installing PowerShell

1.7 Contacting us

1.8 Being immediately effective with PowerShell

2 Meet PowerShell

2.1 PowerShell on Windows

2.2 PowerShell on macOS

2.2.1 Installation on macOS

2.3 PowerShell on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04)

2.3.1 Installation on Ubuntu 18.04

2.4 Visual Studio Code and the PowerShell extension

2.4.1 Installing Visual Studio Code and the PowerShell extension

2.4.2 Getting familiar with Visual Studio Code

2.4.3 Customizing Visual Studio Code and the PowerShell extension

2.5 It’s typing class all over again

2.6 What version is this?

2.7 Lab

3 Using the help system

3.1 The help system: How you discover commands

3.2 Updatable help

3.3 Asking for help

3.4 Using help to find commands

3.5 Interpreting the help

3.5.1 Parameter sets and common parameters

3.5.2 Optional and mandatory parameters

3.5.3 Positional parameters

3.5.4 Parameter values

3.5.5 Finding command examples

3.6 Accessing “about” topics

3.7 Accessing online help

3.8 Lab

3.9 Lab answers

4 Running commands

4.1 Let’s talk security

4.1.1 Execution policy

4.2 Not scripting, but running commands

4.3 The anatomy of a command

4.4 The cmdlet naming convention

4.5 Aliases: Nicknames for commands

4.6 Taking shortcuts

4.6.1 Truncating parameter names

4.6.2 Using parameter name aliases

4.6.3 Using positional parameters

4.7 Support for external commands

4.8 Dealing with errors

4.9 Common points of confusion

4.9.1 Typing cmdlet names

4.9.2 Typing parameters

4.10 Lab

4.11 Lab answers

5 Working with providers

5.1 What are providers?

5.2 Understanding how the filesystem is organized

5.3 Navigating the filesystem

5.4 Using wildcards and literal paths

5.5 Working with other providers

5.5.1 Windows Registry

5.6 Lab

5.7 Lab answers

6 The pipeline: Connecting commands

6.1 Connecting one command to another: Less work for you

6.2 Exporting to a file

6.2.1 Exporting to CSV

6.2.2 Exporting to JSON

6.2.3 Exporting to XML

6.2.4 Out-File

6.2.5 Comparing files

6.3 Piping to a file

6.4 Converting to HTML

6.5 Using cmdlets that modify the system: Killing processes

6.6 Common points of confusion

6.7 Lab

6.8 Lab answers

7 Adding commands

7.1 How one shell can do everything

7.2 Extensions: Finding and installing modules

7.3 Extensions: Finding and adding modules

7.4 Command conflicts and removing extensions

7.5 Playing with a new module

7.6 Common points of confusion

7.7 Lab

7.7 Lab answers

8 Objects: Data by another name

8.1 What are objects?

8.2 Understanding why PowerShell uses objects

8.3 Discovering objects: Get-Member

8.4 Using object attributes, or properties

8.5 Using object actions, or methods

8.6 Sorting objects

8.7 Selecting the properties you want

8.8 Objects until the end

8.9 Common points of confusion

8.10 Lab

8.11 Lab answers

9 A practical interlude

9.1 Defining the task

9.2 Finding the commands

9.3 Learning to use the commands

9.4 Tips for teaching yourself

9.5 Lab

9.6 Lab answer

10 The pipeline, deeper

10.1 The pipeline: Enabling power with less typing

10.2 How PowerShell passes data down the pipeline

10.3 Plan A: Pipeline input ByValue

10.4 Plan B: Pipeline input ByPropertyName

10.5 When things don’t line up: Custom properties

10.6 Working with Azure PowerShell

10.7 Parenthetical commands

10.8 Extracting the value from a single property

10.9 Lab

10.10 Lab answers

10.11 Further exploration

11 Formatting: And why it’s done on the right

11.1 Formatting: Making what you see prettier

11.2 Working with the default formatting

11.3 Formatting tables

11.4 Formatting lists

11.5 Formatting wide lists

11.6 Creating custom columns and list entries

11.7 Going out: To a file or to the host

11.8 Another out: GridViews

11.9 Common points of confusion

11.9.1 Always format right

11.9.2 One type of object at a time, please

11.10 Lab

11.11 Lab answers

11.12 Further exploration

12 Filtering and comparisons

12.1 Making the shell give you just what you need

12.2 Filtering left

12.3 Using comparison operators

12.4 Filtering objects out of the pipeline

12.5 Using the iterative command-line model

12.6 Common points of confusion

12.6.1 Filter left, please

12.6.2 When $_ is allowed

12.7 Lab

12.8 Lab answers

12.9 Further exploration

13 Remote control: One-to-one and one-to-many

13.1 The idea behind remote PowerShell

13.1.1 Remoting on Windows devices

13.1.2 Remoting on macOS and Linux devices

13.1.3 Cross-platform remoting

13.2 Setting up PSRP over SSH

13.2.1 macOS and Linux

13.2.2 Setting up SSH on Windows

13.3 PSRP over SSH overview

13.4 WinRM overview

13.5 Using Enter-PSSession and Exit-PSSession for one-to-one remoting

13.6 Using Invoke-Command for one-to-many remoting

13.7 Differences between remote and local commands

13.7.1 Deserialized objects

13.7.2 Local vs. remote processing

13.8 But wait, there’s more

13.9 Common points of confusion

13.10 Lab

13.11 Lab answers

13.12 Further exploration

14 Multitasking with background jobs

14.1 Making PowerShell do multiple things at the same time

14.2 Synchronous vs. asynchronous

14.3 Creating a process job

14.4 Creating a thread job

14.5 Remoting, as a job

14.6 Jobs in the wild

14.7 Getting job results

14.8 Working with child jobs

14.9 Commands for managing jobs

14.10 Common points of confusion

14.11 Lab

14.12 Lab answers

15 Working with many objects, one at a time

15.1 The preferred way: “Batch” cmdlets

15.2 The CIM way: Invoking methods

15.3 The backup plan: Enumerating objects

15.3.1 Making the cmdlets work for you

15.4 Let’s speed things up

15.5 Common points of confusion

15.5.1 Which way is the right way?

15.5.2 Diminishing returns of Parallel ForEach

15.5.3 Method documentation

15.5.4 ForEach-Object confusion

15.6 Lab

15.7 Lab answers

16 Variables: A place to store your stuff

16.1 Introduction to variables

16.2 Storing values in variables

16.3 Using variables: Fun tricks with quotes

16.4 Storing many objects in a variable

16.4.1 Working with single objects in a variable

16.4.2 Working with multiple objects in a variable

16.4.3 Other ways to work with multiple objects

16.4.4 Unrolling properties and methods in PowerShell

16.5 More tricks with double quotes

16.6 Declaring a variable’s type

16.7 Commands for working with variables

16.8 Variable best practices

16.9 Common points of confusion

16.10 Lab

16.11 Lab answers

16.12 Further exploration

17 Input and output

17.1 Prompting for, and displaying, information

17.2 Read-Host

17.3 Write-Host

17.4 Write-Output

17.5 Other ways to write

17.6 Lab

17.7 Lab answers

17.8 Further exploration

18 Sessions: Remote control with less work

18.1 Creating and using reusable sessions

18.2 Enter-PSSession with session objects

18.3 Invoke-Command with session objects

18.4 Implicit remoting: Importing a session

18.5 Using disconnected sessions

18.6 Lab

18.7 Lab answers

18.8 Further exploration

19 You call this scripting?

19.1 Not programming, more like batch files

19.2 Making commands repeatable

19.3 Parameterizing commands

19.4 Creating a parameterized script

19.5 Documenting your script

19.6 One script, one pipeline

19.7 A quick look at scope

19.8 Lab

19.9 Lab answer

20 Improving your parameterized script

20.1 Starting point

20.2 Getting PowerShell to do the hard work

20.3 Making parameters mandatory

20.4 Adding parameter aliases

20.5 Validating parameter input

20.6 Adding the warm and fuzzies with verbose output

20.7 Lab

20.8 Lab answer

21 Using regular expressions to parse text files

21.1 The purpose of regular expressions

21.2 A regex syntax primer

21.3 Using regex with -Match

21.4 Using regex with Select-String

21.5 Lab

21.6 Lab answers

21.7 Further exploration

22 Using someone else’s script

22.1 The script

22.1.1 Parameter block

22.1.2 Process block

22.2 It’s a line-by-line examination

22.3 Lab

22.4 Lab answer

23 Adding logic and loops

23.1 Foreach and Foreach-Object

23.1.1 Foreach

23.1.2 Foreach-Object

23.1.3 Foreach-Object -Parallel

23.3 While

23.3 Do While

23.4 Lab

23.5 Lab answers

24 Handling errors

24.1 Understanding errors and exceptions

24.2 Bad handling

24.3 Two reasons for exception handling

24.4 Handling exceptions

24.5 Handling exceptions for noncommands

24.6 Going further with exception handling

24.7 Lab

24.8 Lab answer

25 Debugging techniques

25.1 Output everything

25.2 One line at a time

25.3 Hey, script, stop right there . . . with breakpoints

25.4 Lab

26 Tips, tricks, and techniques

26.1 Profiles, prompts, and colors: Customizing the shell

26.1.1 PowerShell profiles

26.1.2 Customizing the prompt

26.1.3 Tweaking colors

26.2 Operators: -as, -is, -replace, -join, -split, -contains, -in

26.2.1 -as and -is

26.2.2 -replace

26.2.3 -join and -split

26.2.4 -contains and -in

26.3 String manipulation

26.4 Date manipulation

26.5 Dealing with WMI dates

26.6 Setting default parameter values

26.7 Playing with script blocks

26.8 More tips, tricks, and techniques

27 Never the end

27.1 Ideas for further exploration

27.2 “Now that I’ve read the book, where do I start?”

27.3 Other resources you’ll grow to love

Appendix. PowerShell cheat sheet

A.1 Punctuation

A.2 Help file

A.3 Operators

A.4 Custom property and column syntax

A.5 Pipeline parameter input

A.6 When to use $_

index

James Petty is CEO of PowerShell.org and The DevOps Collective, and a Microsoft MVP. Travis Plunk is an engineer on the PowerShell team. Tyler Leonhardt is an engineer on Visual Studio Code. Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks are the original authors of Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches.

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