Introduction 1
Part I: Getting a Bird's-Eye View of PowerShell 2 9
Chapter 1: The Windows PowerShell Rap Sheet 11
Chapter 2: Customizing and Shortcutting the Environment 21
Chapter 3: A Pinch of Shell, a Pound of Power 37
Part II: PowerShell's Basic Structure and Syntax 47
Chapter 4: Shelling Out Commands and Scripts 49
Chapter 5: When Dollars Turn into Variables 61
Chapter 6: A Bit of Logic to Save the Day 77
Chapter 7: Working on a Pipeline 89
Part III: Complex Data Description and Sharing 97
Chapter 8: Working with Windows Management Instrumentation 99
Chapter 9: Bringing Strings into the Limelight 117
Chapter 10: I'll Take Numbers for $100, Please 137
Chapter 11: Grouping Data Using Arrays and Hash Tables 147
Chapter 12: Readin' and Writin' Files 159
Chapter 13: Going On a Date with PowerShell 175
Part IV: Controlling Where and How You Operate PowerShell 185
Chapter 14: Using Functions to Divide and Conquer 187
Chapter 15: PowerShell Ninjas: Running Jobs Remotely or in the Background 209
Chapter 16: Making Your Script Speak Different Languages 223
Chapter 17: Smashing Those Bugs 231
Part V: Real-World Windows Administration Using PowerShell 245
Chapter 18: Mission Control: All Systems Go 247
Chapter 19: Taming the Windows Registry 261
Chapter 20: Reaching Out to Active Directory 273
Chapter 21: PowerShell Lockdown 287
Chapter 22: Converting Your Old Scripts: Out with the Old, In with the New 301
Part VI: Configuring and Reporting Via PowerShell 317
Chapter 23: Controlling Your Network Confi guration 319
Chapter 24: Managing Your Hardware 331
Chapter 25: Making Reporting Easy 345
Part VII: The Part of Tens 357
Chapter 26: The Ten Most Important Cmdlets 359
Chapter 27: Ten Common PowerShell Mistakes 365
Bonus Chapter 1: Handling Exceptions 1
Index 375
