David’s Technical Musings

The following cmdlets provide functionality that you may find yourself using on a regular basis.  It’s also likely that you’ll use some of them without knowing it as you use DOS-based or UNIX-based aliases instead.

Environment Cmdlets

Cmdlet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Get-Help	help man	Gets help for a cmdlet or concept.  Some useful parameters include -Detailed, -Examples, -Full, -Parameter, and -Verbose.  When you request a particular help topic, the content of the topic is displayed.  When you use wildcard characters, the topics are displayed as a list.  Help about concepts in Windows PowerShell begins with "about_". Also check out the help and man functions.
Get-Command	gcm	Displays basic information about cmdlets, aliases, functions, and executable files.
Get-Member	gm	Displays information about the .NET object that a command returns, including the type, properties, and methods of the object.  Use a pipeline operator (|) to send the results of a command to Get-Member.

 

Alias Cmdlets

These cmdlets allow getting and setting aliases.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Get-Alias	gal	Displays aliases defined in the current session.  Aliases are also accessible below the Alias: drive.
Set-Alias		Creates an alias for a cmdlet name, function name, or the name of an executable file.

 

Location Cmdlets

These cmdlets allow changing or getting the current location in the PowerShell namespace.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Get-Location	sal	Gets the current location for operating on objects in the namespace.
Set-Location	cd chdir sl	Sets the current location for operation on objects in the namespace.  Unlike in Windows command prompt windows, this will change the current drive as well as the current directory.
Push-Location	pushd	Pushes the current location onto the stack.
Pop-Location	popd	Changes the current location to the location most recently pushed onto the stack.
Test-Path		Determines whether all elements of a path exist.

 

Drive Cmdlets

These cmdlets operate on PowerShell drives.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Get-PSDrive	gdr	Gets the currently defined PowerShell drives.
New-PSDrive	ndrmount	Creates a new PowerShell drive.
Remove-PSDrive	rdr	Remove a PowerShell drive.

 

Item Cmdlets

These cmdlets operate on items, such as files and directories.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Get-Item	gi	Gets the item at the specified location.
New-Item	ni	Creates a new item at the specified location.
Clear-Item		Deletes the contents of an item without deleting the item.
Set-Item	si	Sets the value of the item at the specified location.
Copy-Item	copy cp cpi	Copies an item.
Move-Item	move mv mi	Moves an item.
Remove-Item	del erase rm rmdir rd ri	Removes the item at the specified location.
Get-ChildItem	dir ls gcm	Gets the items and child items in one ore more specified locations.  Specify -recurse to include items in subdirectories.

 

Formatting Cmdlets

These cmdlets control how information is formatted in the output stream.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Format-List	fl	Formats the output as a list of properties in which each property appears on a new line.
Format-Table	ft	Formats the output as a table.
Format-Wide	fw	Formats the output as a wide table that displays only one property of each object.

 

Output Cmdlets

These cmdlets control where information is written.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Out-Host	oh	Sends the output to the command line.
Out-String		Sends the output to the host as a series of strings.  This is the default output cmdlet, so it typically does not need to be specified unless you want to use its parameters to change the display.
Out-File		Sends the output to a file.
Out-Printer	lp	Sends the output to a printer.
Out-Null		Deletes output instead of sending it to the console.

 

Filtering Cmdlets

These cmdlets filter the output from one cmdlet on its way to the next cmdlet in the pipeline.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Sort-Object	sort	Sorts objects by property values.
Where-Object	where	Creates a filter that controls which objects will be passed along a command pipeline.

 

Write Cmdlets

These cmdlets allow you to write information to the the output stream.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
Write-Output	echo write	Writes an object to the success pipeline.
Write-Warning		Writes an object to the warning pipeline.  The text is written in yellow on a black background.
Write-Error		Writes an object to the error pipeline.  The text is written in red on a black background.
Write-Host		Writes an object by using the host user interface.  This is a very flexible way to write information to the console.
Write-Verbose		Writes a string to the verbose display of the host.  The $VerbosePreference variable determins whether or not the string is displayed in the console window.  Valid values for this variable are SilentlyContinue, Stop, Continue, and Inquire.

 

Variable Cmdlets

These cmdlets operate on variables in the Variable: namespace.  These variables can be referenced simply by preceding them with $.  To reference environment variables, precede them with env:, e.g. $env:windir.

CmdLet	Alias/Alternate	Description
New-Variable	nv	Creates a new variable.
Get-Variable	gv	Gets the value of a variable.
Set-Variable	sv	Sets the value of a variable.
Clear-Variable	cv	Clears the value of a variable.
Remove-Variable	rv	Deletes a variable.

 

You may want to read the Windows PowerShell Getting Started Guide which is installed with PowerShell as it has additional information about how to use several of these cmdlets.