Windows PowerShell™ 2 For Dummies®

Chapter 4. Shelling Out Commands and Scripts

In This Chapter

• Understanding Cmdlets

• Running your old Windows Shell and Windows Scripting Host scripts in Windows PowerShell

It's time for you to come face-to-face with Windows PowerShell commands, otherwise known as Cmdlets (pronounced command-lets). These commands are built on top of the .NET Framework. They are named in a very specific verb–noun format to make it obvious what action the Cmdlet is designed to perform, such as Get-ChildItem to retrieve the children of a specific object or Set-Alias to set an alias.

If you've been a Windows administrator for a while now, you undoubtedly have a few scripts in your virtual toolbox to make your day-to-day administrative tasks a bit more automated. Windows PowerShell also allows you to continue making use of many of these scripts without any modification right from within the Windows PowerShell environment.

In this chapter, you find out what's so special about Windows PowerShell commands that caused Microsoft to conjure up a completely new name for them. You'll also find out how to read command syntax and how to get help if you don't know what a command does. You get to see how you can run Windows Shell and Windows Scripting Host scripts right from within the PSH command shell.

Cmdlets: The Little Commands That Could!

The first time I ever saw the word Cmdlet was back when I started hearing about Windows PowerShell (when it was still called Monad). I thought that it meant something like a pseudo-command. ...