Mastering PowerShell: Beginner to Efficient Level

Master PowerShell basics—commands, variables, loops, conditionals—and use IDEs like PowerShell ISE or VSCode for syntax highlighting, autocompletion, debugging, with an incremental, task-based approach.

Break complex requirements into tasks, script steps from changing directory to creating folders and files, store backups, read others' scripts, use comments, and practice.

Download PowerShell core from the internet, install the x64 msi for Windows, add it to your path, and verify the PSVersion 7.1.1 core.

Explore the PowerShell ISE integrated scripting environment to write, test, and debug scripts with multiline editing, intellisense, and one-click run options via run selection or run script.

Install and configure Visual Studio Code, a free open-source, cross-platform editor, to run PowerShell with the PowerShell extension and an ISE-like environment with extensions and Intellisense.

Discover how to use the PowerShell help system efficiently, leveraging Get-Command and Get-Help to explore commands such as cmdlets, aliases, functions, and scripts with PowerShell ISE and VS Code.

See a quick demo of Get-Command in PowerShell ISE, discover commands by name, filter by type like cmdlets, and view details such as module and version.

Explore Get-Help in PowerShell, including using aliases like Help, discovering commands with wildcards, filtering by category, and inspecting detailed, online, and example outputs; refresh help with Update-Help.

Master PowerShell basics by adding comments to scripts to improve documentation, readability, and debugging, using single-line hash comments or multi-line comments to preserve original code during testing.

Create folders and files in PowerShell with new-item, set the current directory, and bulk via pipelines using foreach, detailing item type, path, text content, force, what if, and confirm.

Copy files and folders with the copy-item command by selecting source folder one and destination folder two, using star to include all contents, and recurse to copy subfolders.

Learn to list folder contents with get-childitem using include, exclude, depth, and force, and to view file contents with get-content, including tail for last lines.

Mastering PowerShell basics cover replacing, adding, and appending file contents using set-content, add-content, and redirection operators, with verification via get-item in the current folder.

Test whether a folder or file exists with test-path, then create the folder when missing or exit when present using new-item to create a directory.

Delete folders and files using get-childitem and remove-item with recurse, include, exclude, and force, and filter by age or name with where-object and get-date for items older than seven days.

Master PowerShell basics by learning to create, import, and manipulate CSV files, append columns, and perform data operations for reporting and bulk operations.

Explore automatic and manual csv creation in PowerShell by exporting command output or building csvs. Select-object to pick display name and status, and remove the type row with no-type-information.

Import CSV data with import-csv, store it in a variable, and run a script block against each row to extract name and gender for bulk actions.

Filter selected csv rows in PowerShell by importing the csv and applying where-object to process only rows that match criteria. For example, process rows where gender equals girl.

Learn to add an extra column to a CSV file in PowerShell by piping imported data through Select-Object, using static or dynamic values from commands like PSVersionTable or date.

Explore how PowerShell variables act as backbone of scripts, storing values of any type for reuse. Learn variable types, data types, declaration requirements, and using variables in expressions and statements.

Learn the characteristics of PowerShell variables, including the dollar-sign notation, valid alphanumeric and special characters, case-insensitive names, and session scope with optional persistence via a profile.

Learn best practices for naming PowerShell variables, using alphanumeric and underscore characters, avoiding spaces and special characters, and choosing sensible, descriptive names for clarity.

Discover how PowerShell variables have local or global scope and how to use the global scope modifier to access script-created variables from the console.

Explore how PowerShell automatically infers variable data types and when to declare types explicitly, preventing string concatenation in numeric operations and using common types like string, integer, bool, and more.

Explore managing PowerShell variables with Clear-Variable, Get-Variable, New-Variable, Remove-Variable, and Set-Variable, noting that variables are friendly, dynamic, and can be handled on the fly without the $ sign.

Master PowerShell by learning how double and single quotation marks affect variable evaluation in expressions, with a quick demo showing values versus variable names.

Explore the three PowerShell variable types: user created, automatic, and preference, and learn how to persist variables via profile, while using automatic variables like $$, ?, $_, and PID.

Explore how PowerShell operators compare and manipulate data, learn the different types of operators, and apply them across various scenarios.

Explore the characteristics of PowerShell operators: most are not case sensitive by default, can be made case sensitive by prefixing with c, and many operators start with a hyphen.

Explore the full spectrum of PowerShell operators—from arithmetic, assignment, comparison, logical, redirection, split and join, to type operators—covering subexpression, call, pipeline, range, and member access.

Explore arithmetic operators in PowerShell: plus, minus, multiply, divide, and modulus on numbers and strings. See a quick demo of concatenation, repetition, and a file-naming example using these operators.

Explore how assignment operators modify numeric variables using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and modulus. Observe how the same operators behave differently with strings, as values are concatenated instead of arithmetic.

Learn how equality operators in PowerShell compare scalar values and collections, returning booleans and demonstrating equals, not equals, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to.

Explore matching operators in PowerShell for strings and collections, using like, not like, match, and not match with wildcards to filter services and values.

Explore containment operators in PowerShell, including contains, not contains, in, and not in, with a demo that shows booleans and first-match behavior in a production environment.

Learn the PowerShell replacement operator, including its case sensitive mode, with a demo that renames files and replaces strings from test value to best value.

Explore type operators in PowerShell to verify a variable’s type, such as checking A is integer, and use get-member to reveal the type.

Explore how logical operators in PowerShell, such as and, or, xor, and not, combine conditional statements to form complex conditions, with a quick demo of true and false outcomes.

Master PowerShell redirection operators to send command output to files. Use single angle bracket to write and double angle bracket to append, with file creation if needed.

Explore the split operator in PowerShell to divide strings by whitespace or custom delimiters. Preserve delimiters with parentheses, support multiple delimiters with square brackets, and limit the output substrings.

Explore how the join operator in PowerShell combines strings into a single string, preserving order and using no delimiter by default, with two syntax forms demonstrated.

Explore unary operators in PowerShell, including prefix and postfix increment and decrement. See how these affect expressions and for loops with a quick demo moving 100 to 101 and 102.

Use the grouping operator to override operator precedence in expressions. Demonstrate how command output participates in an expression with get-service, accessing a service's display name at index 2.

Learn how the subexpression operator inserts the output of commands into a main expression, demonstrated by embedding command results in a string to update the OS.

Learn how the PowerShell call operator runs commands stored in variables as strings or script blocks, and execute scripts by name using the operator.

Explore the array subexpression operator to declare an array, and the hash table literal syntax to declare a hash table, with upcoming videos dedicated to arrays and hash tables.

Explore comma operator to create or append an array, index operator to fetch elements, and pipeline operator to pass output from get hyphen service to where hyphen object.

Explore the range operator to generate sequential integers and, from PowerShell 6, characters, and use the member access operator to fetch a service's display name.

Master the PowerShell pipeline by chaining get-service, stop-service, and start-service with the pipeline operator to pass output as input, reducing code length and task complexity.

Learn how to use the pipeline to process, format, and filter command output in PowerShell, using examples like Get-Service and Stop-Service to output readable service data.

Learn to use PowerShell pipelines with commands that don't return output by default by applying the -PassThru parameter, demonstrated with Rename-Item and New-Item in file management contexts.

Explore how pipeline input passes from one PowerShell command to the next, by value or property name. Use Get-Member to identify output types and verify compatibility with Get-Service and Stop-Service.

Explore how arrays function as data structures that store a collection of items, which can be of the same or different types, and learn PowerShell array concepts.

Explore creating and initializing arrays in PowerShell using the array operator, comma-separated values, and the range operator, with examples like fruits and services.

Explore how PowerShell arrays index from 0 to N-1, use negative indices for last elements, and combine individual elements with ranges using the addition operator to access array items.

Learn how PowerShell defaults to object arrays, determine types with GetType(), and create strongly typed arrays by casting or defining a specific .NET type such as integer or process.

Explore how PowerShell operators work with arrays, including join, replace, contains, and in, with examples. See joins with a delimiter, temporary replacements, and membership checks on numbers and fruits arrays.

Explore essential PowerShell array properties and methods, including the length property and its alias count, and see a quick demo that shows an array of numbers 1 through 12.

Use the PowerShell clear method to reset all elements of an array to their default values, without changing the array size, as shown in a numbers demo.

Master PowerShell's foreach method to iterate every array element and apply operations, such as arithmetic or string transformations like uppercase and lowercase.

Learn to filter array elements with the PowerShell where method using a script block, and master modes such as default, first, last, skip, until, and split with optional return limits.

Learn how to add, replace, and remove elements in PowerShell arrays and array lists, contrasting fixed-size arrays with System.Collections.ArrayList, and using add, set value, remove, and remove at methods.

Learn how to iterate through array elements with PowerShell loops, using foreach, for, and while to apply a script block and multiply each element by a chosen factor.

Explore PowerShell hashtables by learning three creation approaches: initialize blank and add data later, create and populate at once, and use a single-line inline hash table for quick data.

Learn how to create ordered hash tables in PowerShell to maintain insertion order using the ordered keyword, and understand appending new items.

Master PowerShell hashtables by adding keys and values with the add method, key-index assignments, and the property operator, then merge contents from another hash table into a new one.

Master the approaches to access hashtable keys and values in PowerShell, from retrieving a single key to fetching multiple values with arrays and column name access patterns, aided by autocompletion.

Learn two ways in PowerShell to run a script block against a hash table: iterate using keys and enumerate key-value pairs, demonstrated with sample data.

Learn to iterate a PowerShell hash table by keys, access corresponding values, and count elements with Measure-Object, then use enumeration to process key-value pairs.

Iterate a script block against each hash table pair by using the GetEnumerator method to enumerate key-value pairs in PowerShell.

Explore creating conditional logic with hash tables in PowerShell, using keys and values to test contains, minimum age, and specific name scenarios.

Learn to remove key value pairs from a hashtable in PowerShell, including deleting single keys, removing multiple entries, and clearing the entire hashtable.

Learn how to rename hash table columns in PowerShell by piping to format-table with custom expressions, and persist changes by storing the updated content back in a variable.

Learn splatting in PowerShell to pass a collection of parameters to commands as a unit, use a hash table for common values, and apply multiple splats to reduce code repetition.

Master how to sort hash table contents in PowerShell by enumerating the table and sorting by value or key, breaking the capsule default behavior to obtain the desired order.

Export the contents of a hash table to a csv file using a PowerShell command, specify the path (for example in the current folder), and verify the file contents.

Create and manage multi-column hash tables in PowerShell using PSCustomObject or a PSObject with add-member, adding properties like name, city, country, computer name, RAM, and CPU.