Table of contents for Intro to PowerShell

  1. Getting PowerShell
  2. Basic PowerShell Concepts
  3. Commonly Used Cmdlets
  4. PowerShell Scripts and Profiles
  5. Using PowerShell types with commands and variables
  6. Error handling in PowerShell scripts
  7. Calling static methods
  8. $NestedPromptLevel
  9. Prompts in PowerShell


PowerShell is extremely flexible in what it allows you to do, even allowing you to call static methods on just about any class in just about any assembly.  The problem I had was that I couldn’t remember what the syntax was.  I seemed to recall that it included a double colon (::) but beyond that I was stumped.  A short trip to Google led me to the Windows PowerShell blog.  Here’s the syntax:

[full-type-name]::method-name(parameters)

For example:

PS C:\> [System.IO.Path]::GetDirectoryName("C:\Windows\Fred")
C:\Windows

Note that since there are no using statements in PowerShell like there are in C#, you must specify the full name, including all namespaces, for the type.  Thus you can’t simply specify [Path] but instead must type [System.IO.Path].  Case is not important, however, so you could also type [system.io.path]::getdirectoryname and get the same result.

You can see what methods are available on a static class by using the -Static parameter to the Get-Member cmdlet:

PS C:\ > [System.IO.Path] | Get-Member -Static

    TypeName: System.IO.Path

Name                        MemberType Definition
––––                        –––––––––– ––––––––––
ChangeExtension             Method     static System.String ChangeExtension(String path, String extension)
Combine                     Method     static System.String Combine(String path1, String path2)
Equals                      Method     static System.Boolean Equals(Object objA, Object objB)
GetDirectoryName            Method     static System.String GetDirectoryName(String path)
GetExtension                Method     static System.String GetExtension(String path)
GetFileName                 Method     static System.String GetFileName(String path)
GetFileNameWithoutExtension Method     static System.String GetFileNameWithoutExtension(String path)
GetFullPath                 Method     static System.String GetFullPath(String path)
GetInvalidFileNameChars     Method     static System.Char[] GetInvalidFileNameChars()
GetInvalidPathChars         Method     static System.Char[] GetInvalidPathChars()
GetPathRoot                 Method     static System.String GetPathRoot(String path)
GetRandomFileName           Method     static System.String GetRandomFileName()
GetTempFileName             Method     static System.String GetTempFileName()
GetTempPath                 Method     static System.String GetTempPath()
HasExtension                Method     static System.Boolean HasExtension(String path)
IsPathRooted                Method     static System.Boolean IsPathRooted(String path)
ReferenceEquals             Method     static System.Boolean ReferenceEquals(Object objA, Object objB)
AltDirectorySeparatorChar   Property   static System.Char AltDirectorySeparatorChar {get;set;}
DirectorySeparatorChar      Property   static System.Char DirectorySeparatorChar {get;set;}
InvalidPathChars            Property   static System.Char[] InvalidPathChars {get;set;}
PathSeparator               Property   static System.Char PathSeparator {get;set;}
VolumeSeparatorChar         Property   static System.Char VolumeSeparatorChar {get;set;}
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