What this book covers

Chapter 1, First Steps, covers the installation of Powershell and the validation of the installed version, as well as how to issue the first few commands.

Chapter 2, Building Blocks, introduces the "Big 3" cmdlets that reveal the workings of the PowerShell cmdlets.

Chapter 3, Objects and PowerShell, explains how the output in PowerShell is always an object, and how we can deal with these objects.

Chapter 4, Life on the Assembly Line, presents the PowerShell pipeline and the *-object cmdlets that provide a tremendous ability for data manipulation.

Chapter 5, Formatting Output, explains the PowerShell formatting system, including how the output is formatted by default, as well as how to control formatting.

Chapter 6, Scripts, shows how sequences of commands can be packaged into a reusable unit.

Chapter 7, Functions, explains how to use functions as a second way of building reusable blocks of code.

Chapter 8, Modules, demonstrates PowerShell's method of organizing code libraries.

Chapter 9, File I/O, shows several ways to work with files in PowerShell for input and output.

Chapter 10, WMI and CIM, explains how to access WMI repositories with the WMI and CIM cmdlets.

Chapter 11, Web Server Administration, demonstrates a few techniques to use PowerShell to administer the IIS web server.

Appendix, Next Steps, suggests some "next steps" that you will find useful as skills to add to your PowerShell repertoire.