What Are We Talking About?

Most of the time PowerShell is pretty clear about what it is doing. The language attempts to be concise but not cryptic. For example, PowerShell commands follow a consistent Verb-Noun naming convention. Parameter names are in plain English and meaningful. I've certainly worked with my share of cryptic languages. Perl anyone?

However, that doesn't mean PowerShell isn't without confusion. It can be challenging to keep track of symbols and characters and what they are supposed to do. This is especially true for PowerShell beginners or those coming from other languages where certain characters have different meanings.

I thought it would be helpful to write an article or two about special characters in PowerShell. These are typically punctuation marks that have a specific meaning or use-case in PowerShell. And even then, usage will vary based on the situation. Fortunately, PowerShell is very good at figuring out the context of your command. However, you might need a little assistance to make sure PowerShell will use the character the way you expect.

Let's start our exploration of PowerShell characters with the question mark (?) and see what we learn along the way.