Although it uses many familiar DOS commands (sort of), it introduces some
Unix-like functionality to the Windows platform while borrowing some of
* ???Monad??? literally means ???one??? or ???single,??? but was likely chosen by Microsoft as the codename
for PowerShell to evoke monadism, Gottfried Leibniz??™s philosophy that the physical and metaphysical
universe exists because of a divine ???harmony??? between fundamental elements he called
monads. To say the comparison is presumptuous on Microsoft??™s part is an understatement, but
a noble goal nonetheless.
Windows PowerShell | 565
Scripting and
Automation
the Windows-aware features found in WSH scripts, like printing, security,
and process control.
Windows PowerShell 1.0 was released more or less concurrently with Windows
Vista, but it??™s not included in the default Vista installation. You can
download PowerShell for free from http://www.microsoft.com/powershell/, but
Microsoft has hinted that it??™ll be included with future versions of Windows.
At first glance, PowerShell (Figure 9-4) looks like an ordinary Command
Prompt window, with the main distinguishing feature being the text PS preceding
the prompt. As you may have guessed, you type a command at the
prompt and press Enter to excecute the command. But the commands you
can type??”and how they interact with each other??”are what really set
PowerShell apart.
CmdLets and Aliases
PowerShell??™s built-in commands are called CmdLets for reasons that aren??™t
entirely clear, and the CmdLets all have long, rather inconvenient names like
Copy-Item, ConvertFrom-SecureString, and Invoke-Expression.
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