Part I - Learning PowerShell This comprehensive tour of the PowerShell language and runtime introduces the language and offers a deep insight into how and why things are the way they are. Part I, covers the PowerShell language including the syntax, the type system with examples showing how each feature works.

Chapter 1-PowerShell history and a quick tour of the features of the environment.

Chapter 2-PowerShell concepts you'll need to put PowerShell to work.

Chapter 3-The PowerShell type system and its relationship to .NET.

Chapter 4-Operators and expressions including basic arithmetic, comparison and assignment, wildcard and regular expression pattern matching.

Chapter 5-Operations for working with arrays (indexing, slicing) and objects (properties and methods, output redirection, the formatting operator and PowerShell variables.

Chapter 6-PowerShell language constructs like if statement and loops.

Chapter 7-Programming in PowerShell, including functions and scripts and variable scoping.

Chapter 8-Object construction and extensions, Scriptblocks and how to extend the PowerShell language.

Chapter 9-Error handling and debugging.

Part II looks at applying PowerShell in specific technology areas and problem domains.

Chapter 10-Text processing such as basic string processing, file processing (including handling binary files) and working with XML documents.

Chapter 11-Locating, exploring and instantiating types in the .NET framework including generic types with applications including network programming and WinForms.

Chapter 12-Using the application automation models to script Microsoft Word, WMI from the command line and in scripts to inspect, update and manage a Windows system, and VBScript interaction.

Chapter 13-Security, security, security.

So why write it? Mostly because of PowerShell. Although PowerShell draws heavily from existing technologies, it combines them in some very novel ways. This kind of novelty leads to misunderstandings. As we showed our work to the world I found that there were a number of questions that were being asked over and over again. These questions would usually arise as a result of some prior language experience that the user had. There needed to be a way to gather this information altogether in one place.

It's astonishing was how much power comes out of the synergy of the various technologies underlying PowerShell. The PowerShell team would read people's blogs and be astonished by the creativity that was being demonstrated. This book tries to foster that creativity by conveying just how capable the PowerShell is.

And finally, this is the book I wanted to read. I love programming languages and the best books are the ones that explain not only "what" but also "why". These books give the reader something more that just technical detail. They convey a sense of the overall design and some element of the intent of the designer.

Learn PowerShell, be creative and above all, have fun.

Enjoy,

Bruce Payette