PowerShell Functions 101
One of the content suggestions I received recently asked for content on writing PowerShell functions. Specifically, the reader wanted to see how to write a...
Understanding .NET Enumerations
I want to continue my introduction to the .NET Framework by discussing enumerations. This is a programming structure that is often used in PowerShell. Most...
.NET for IT Pros
Not that long ago, I asked for feedback on this newsletter. One of the things I was looking for was content suggestions. I can’t promise I’ll cover...
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 8
I truly hope you’ve been learning something about developing a PowerShell tool and writing Pester tests. You can easily knock out a quick and dirty script or...
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 7
After a brief break, let’s return to the weather tool and Pester tests. When we ended last time, we had a function to get a location that could be piped to...
Getting Your Group On
I thought I’d give you a break from the weather function and Pester test. We’ll pick that series later. In the meantime, I thought I’d dive into one of my...
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 6
Get-OMLocation
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 5
Parameter Validation
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 4
Weather Codes
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 3
Adding command validation
Feedback Follow-Up
This is a quick follow-up survey for my premium subscribers only. I’d like to get an idea of the number of articles showing up in your email. I’d also like a...
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command Part 2
Test-Driven Development
I Need to Hear From You
When I started this newsletter, I had some ideas about the type of content I wanted to create. I very much wanted to get into the intangible qualities of...
Creating a PowerShell Weather Command
Part 1
Parameter Power
When creating a PowerShell function, you've often heard me say, "Think about who will use it and what are their expectations?" As a corollary, you want to...
Data Files as Script Files
Last year, I wrote an article about the importance of separating PowerShell code from the data you need to run that code. I still believe this is a critical...
Switch Hitting with PowerShell
Last time we started diving into using the Switch construct in PowerShell scripting. I think this is an excellent alternative if you need to build a large...
Switching Things Up in PowerShell
Learning the mechanics and syntax of PowerShell is not that difficult. Anyone can read the documentation for a concept like an IF statement and understand...
Logging with PowerShell Transcripts
Over the course of the last several articles, we’ve been exploring how to use and manage PowerShell transcript files. Before we move on, I wanted to show you...
PowerShell Transcript Tools
In the previous article, we looked at PowerShell’s transcription feature. Running Start-Transcript is a terrific way to maintain an audit log or history of...
PowerShell Transcript Techniques
A helpful PowerShell feature that I don’t think many people take advantage of is transcription. It is very easy to create a text-based log file. The log file...
Building Class-Based PowerShell Modules
Over the last several weeks, we’ve been exploring how to script with a PowerShell class. The last step is to take everything we’ve covered and wrap it up in...
Climbing the PowerShell Class Family Tree
When I started this series, I pointed out that a PowerShell class, while easy to define, lacks all the features of a traditional class defined in a language...
Advanced PowerShell Class Extensions
I think today’s article will be fun. We’ve been exploring how to write and use PowerShell classes in our scripting projects. I hope you’ve grabbed the demo...
Adding PowerShell Class Bells and Whistles
I hope you’ve been enjoying this series of articles on developing with PowerShell classes. As you’ve seen, creating a PowerShell class is not that difficult,...
Extending PowerShell Classes with Methods
We are in the middle of a series of articles teaching how to write PowerShell-based classes. This is a different kind of scripting technique, that I know...
PowerShell Construction Area
In the last article, I started a series focused on scripting with PowerShell classes. The eventual goal is to separate the object definition from the code...
Introduction to PowerShell Class Scripting
I know you’ve heard me go on and on about the importance of working with objects in the PowerShell pipeline. It is this paradigm that puts “Power” in the...
PowerShell ISE Snippets
In past articles, I’ve written about using snippets in VS Code, although I might revisit this in-depth in a future article. As much as I like VS Code and...
More PowerShell Parameter Planning
In the last article, I started an exploration of parameter planning. The mechanics of adding a parameter to your PowerShell function is easy. But deciding...
PowerShell Parameter Planning
Over the last year, I’ve written a lot about PowerShell scripting. I’ve shown you many PowerShell functions and explained their mechanics. Parameters play an...
"Live" PowerShell Tool Making Part 4
Welcome back to the conclusion of my “live” PowerShell toolmaking project using the Crescendo module. I’ve been building a module around the GitHub command...
Live PowerShell Tool Making Part 3
We’re back once more to continue building a Crescendo module around the GitHub command line tool gh.exe. You’ve seen how I approach building a PowerShell and...
"Live" PowerShell Tool Making Part 2
I hope you enjoyed the last article. I know I had a lot of fun writing and coding it. So much so that my brain is racing in a dozen directions over ways to...
"Live" PowerShell Tool Making Part 1
I want to try something new, and I expect it will take more than one article, which is why this is titled Part 1. Last week I introduced you to creating...
Building Command Parameters with Crescendo
In the previous article, we began exploring the process of using the Crescendo module. This module is designed to make it easier to wrap native command-line...
Building to a Command
noun: crescendo; plural noun: crescendos; plural noun: crescendi1.the loudest point reached in a gradually increasing sound.a gradually increasing sound2.the...
Coding Confirmed Commands
Let’s pick up where we left off in the last article. We’ve been looking at adding support for -WhatIf and -Confirm to your PowerShell commands. You get these...
Should I Stay or Should I Process Now?
One of my goals for this newsletter is to help you write better PowerShell scripts. More than that, I want to provide the information you need to create...
Secret Store Automation
In the last article, I introduced you to the secrets management tools from Microsoft. This toolset provides a secure way to store information like...
Can You Keep a Secret
In the last article, I introduced using CMS messages to protect sensitive information. This is a good technique for encrypting a block of text, but probably...
Getting the Message in PowerShell
One of the challenges with scripting in PowerShell is to protect sensitive information. We all know it is bad practice to hard-code credentials and passwords...
A Changelog for the Better
It is a new year which means it is time for a few resolutions. One change I have in mind for the new year is maintaining better change logs for my PowerShell...
Creating a Learning Plan for 2023
Congratulations! You made it through another year. This was not an easy year for the tech industry. Every day I read about more layoffs and re-organizations....
Clean Text Files with Regular Expressions Revisited
In the November 2022 Ask Jeff article, I shared a simple regular expression pattern you could use to filter out blank and commented lines, using a #...
Cleaning Your PowerShell House
As you develop your PowerShell scripting skills, you will advance from creating simple scripts to writing advanced functions that consume pipeline input and...
Climbing Higher in the Abstract Syntax Tree
In the previous article, I introduced you to the AST (Abstract Syntax Tree). This is how PowerShell parses your commands and scripts. Tools like VS Code take...
Climbing the Abstract Syntax Tree
If you’ve been using PowerShell for any length of time, you’ve noticed that features like tab completion fail if there is an error in your command. Or when...
Critiquing Code Comments
I am assuming that if you are reading this article, you are writing PowerShell code. I assume you are at least writing simple PowerShell scripts. Probably...
Leveraging PSObject
In the last article, we dove into the internals of how PowerShell creates and defines objects. It doesn’t matter if it is the result from running Get-Process...