Introduction to PowerShell for Unix

people
PowerShell.org

Introduction to PowerShell for Unix people

PowerShell.org

This project can be followed at:

https://www.penip.com/powershellorg/a-unix-persons-guide-to-powershell

2015 PowerShell.org

Contents

About
Principal author: Matt Penny

This e-book is intended as a Quick Start guide to PowerShell for people who already know Bash or
one of the other Unix shells.
The book has 3 elements:

an introductory chapter which covers some PowerShell concepts

a summary list of PowerShell equivalents of Unix commands in one e-book chapter

a detailed discussion of Powershell equivalents of Unix commands, organised in the alphabetical

order of the unix command

Visit www.penip.com/powershellorg to check for newer editions of this e-book.

This guide is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The
authors encourage you to redistribute this le as widely as possible, but ask that you do not modify
the document.
PowerShell.org eBooks are works-in-progress, and many are curated by members of the community. We encourage you to check back for new editions at least twice a year, by visiting
www.penip.com/powershellorg.
You can download this book in a number of dierent formats (including EPUB, PDF, Microsoft
Word and Plain Text) by clicking Download on the right side of the page.
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4

Introduction to PowerShell for Unix

people
The point of this section is to outline a few areas which I think *nix people should pay particular
attention to when learning Powershell.

Resources for learning PowerShell

A full introduction to PowerShell is beyond the scope of this e-book. My recommendations for an
end-to-end view of PowerShell are:

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches - Written by powershell.orgs Don Jones

and Jeery Hicks, I would guess that this is the book that most people have used to learn
Powershell. Its the Llama book of Powershell.

Microsoft Virtual Academys Getting Started with PowerShell and Advanced Tools & Scripting with PowerShell Jump Start courses - these are recordings of day long webcasts, and are
both free.

unix-like aliases
PowerShell is a friendly environment for Unix people to work in. Many of the concepts are similar,
and the PowerShell team have built in a number of Powershell aliases that look like unix commands.
So, you can, for example type:
1 ls

.and get this:

1
2
3
4
5

Directory : C:\ temp

Mode
LastWriteTime
----------------a--22/02/2015
16:51
-a--20/02/2015
07:31

Length
-----25773
3390

Name
---all_the_details .md
commands - summary .md

6
These can be quite useful when youre switching between shells, although I found that it can be
irritating when the muscle-memory kicks in and you nd yourself typing ls -ltr in PowerShell and
get an error. The ls is just an alias for the PowerShell get-childitem and the Powershell command
doesnt understand -ltr[1].

the pipeline
The PowerShell pipeline is much the same as the Bash shell pipeline. The output of one command
is piped to another one with the | symbol.
The big dierence between piping in the two shells is that in the unix shells you are piping text,
whereas in PowerShell you are piping objects.
This sounds like its going to be a big deal, but its not really.
In practice, if you wanted to get a list of process names, in bash you might do this:
1 ps -ef | cut -c 49 -70

whereas In PowerShell you would do this:

1 get - process | select ProcessName

In Bash you working with characters, or tab-delimited elds. In PowerShell you work with eld names,
which are known as properties.

get-help, get-command, get-member

get-member
When you run a PowerShell command, such as get-history only a subset of the get-history output
is returned to the screen.
In the case of get-history, by default two properties are shown - Id and Commandline
1 $ get - history
2
3
Id CommandLine
4
-- ----------5
1 dir -recurse c:\ temp

but get-history has 4 other properties which you might or might not be interested in:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

$ get - history | select *

Id
CommandLine
ExecutionStatus
StartExecutionTime
EndExecutionTime

:
:
:
:
:

1
dir -recurse c:\ temp
Completed
06/05/2015 13:46:56
06/05/2015 13:47:07

7
The disparity between what is shown and what is available is even greater for more complex entities
like process. By default get-process shows 8 columns, but there are actually over 50 properties (as
well as 20 or so methods) available.
The full range of what you can return from a PowerShell command is given by the get-member
command[2].
To run get-member, you pipe the output of the command youre interested in to it, for example:
1 get - process | get - member

.or, more typically:

1 get - process | gm
get-member

is one of the trinity of help-ful commands:

get-member
get-help
get-command

get-help
get-help

is similar to the Unix man[3].

So if you type get-help get-process, youll get this:

1 NAME
2
Get - Process
3
4 SYNOPSIS
5
Gets the processes that are running on the local computer or a remote computer .
6
7
8 SYNTAX
9
Get - Process [[- Name] <String []>] [- ComputerName <String []>] [- FileVersionInfo ]
[- Module ] [< CommonParameters >]
10
11
Get - Process [- ComputerName <String [] >] [- FileVersionInfo ] [- Module ] -Id
<Int32 []> [< CommonParameters >]
12
13
Get - Process [- ComputerName <String [] >] [- FileVersionInfo ] [- Module ]
-InputObject <Process []> [< CommonParameters >]
14
15
16 DESCRIPTION
17
The Get - Process cmdlet gets the processes on a local or remote computer .
18
19
Without parameters , Get - Process gets all of the processes on the local
computer . You can also specify a particular
20
process by process name or process ID (PID) or pass a process object through
the pipeline to Get - Process .
21
22
By default , Get - Process returns a process object that has detailed information
about the process and supports

8
23

methods that let you start and stop the process . You can also use the
parameters of Get - Process to get file
version information for the program that runs in the process and to get the
modules that the process loaded .

24

25
26
27 RELATED LINKS
28
Online Version : http :// go. microsoft .com/ fwlink /? LinkID =113324
29
Debug - Process
30
Get - Process
31
Start - Process
32
Stop - Process
33
Wait - Process
34
35 REMARKS
36
To see the examples , type: "get -help Get - Process -examples ".
37
For more information , type: "get -help Get - Process -detailed ".
38
For technical information , type: "get -help Get - Process -full ".
39
For online help , type: "get -help Get - Process -online "

There are a couple of wrinkles which actually make the PowerShell help even more help-ful.

you get basic help by typing get-help, more help by typing get-help -full andprobably the
best bit as far as Im concernedyou can cut to the chase by typing get-help -examples
there are lots of about_ pages. These cover concepts, new features (in for example
and subjects which dont just relate to one particular command.
You can see a full list of the about topics by typing get-help about

about_Windows_Powershell_5.0)

get-help works like man -k or apropos. If youre not sure of the command you want to see help
on, just type help process and youll see a list of all the help topics that talk about processes.
If there was only one it would just show you that topic

Comment-based help. When you write your own commands you can (and should!) use the
comment-based help functionality. You follow a loose template for writing a comment header
block, and then this becomes part of the get-help subsystem. Its good.

get-command
If you dont want to go through the help system, and youre not sure what command you need, you
can use get-command.
I use this most often with wild-cards either to explore whats available or to check on spelling.
For example, I tend to need to look up the spelling of ConvertTo-Csv on a fairly regular basis.
PowerShell commands have a very good, very intuitive naming convention of a verb followed by a
noun (for example, get-process, invoke-webrequest), but Im never quite sure where to and from
go for the conversion commands.
To quickly look it up I can type:
get-command *csv*

which returns:

1
2
3
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5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

$ get - command *csv*

CommandType
----------Alias
Alias
Cmdlet
Cmdlet
Cmdlet
Cmdlet
Application
Application

Name
---epcsv -> Export -Csv
ipcsv -> Import -Csv
ConvertFrom -Csv
ConvertTo -Csv
Export -Csv
Import -Csv
ucsvc .exe
vmicsvc .exe

ModuleName
----------

Microsoft . PowerShell . Utility

Microsoft . PowerShell . Utility
Microsoft . PowerShell . Utility
Microsoft . PowerShell . Utility

Functions
Typically PowerShell coding is done in the form of functions[4]. What you do to code and write a
function is this:
Create a function in a plain text .ps1 le[5]
1 gvim say - HelloWorld .ps1

File is missing
then source the function when they need it
1 $ . .\say - HelloWorld .ps1

then run it
1 $ say - helloworld
2 Hello , World

Often people autoload their functions in their $profile or other startup script, as follows:
1
2
3
4
5
6

write - verbose " About to load functions "

foreach ($FUNC in $(dir $FUNCTION_DIR \*. ps1))
{
write - verbose " Loading $FUNC .... "
. $FUNC . FullName
}

## Footnotes
[1] If you wanted the equivalent of ls -ltr you would use gci | sort lastwritetime. gci is an alias
for get-childitem, and I think, sort is an alias for sort-object.
[2] Another way of returning all of the properties of an object is to use select *so in this case you
could type get-process | select *

10
[3] There is actually a built-in alias man which tranlates to get-help, so you can just type man if youre
pining for Unix.
[4] See the following for more detail on writing functions rather than scripts: http://blogs.technet.
com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/06/26/don-t-write-scripts-write-powershell-functions.aspx
[5] Im using gvim here, but notepad would work just as well. PowerShell has a free scripting
environment called PowerShell ISE, but you dont have to use it if you dont want to.

commands summary
alias (set aliases)
1 set - alias

More

alias (show aliases)

1 get - alias

More

apropos
1 get -help

More

basename
1 dir | select name

More

cal
No equivalent, but see the script at http://www.vistax64.com/powershell/17834-unix-cal-command.
html\char003C\relax{}/a>

11

12

cd
1 cd

More

clear
1 clear -host

More

date
1 get -date

More

date -s
1 set -date

More

df -k
1 Get - WMIObject Win32_LogicalDisk | ft -a

More

dirname
1 dir | select directory

More

du
No equivalent, but see the link

13

echo
1 write - output

More

echo -n
1 write -host -nonewline

More

| egrep -i sql
1

| where {[ Regex ]:: Ismatch ($\_.name. tolower () , "sql ") }

More

egrep -i
1 select - string

More

egrep
1 select - string

-casesensitive

More

egrep -v
1 select - string -notmatch

More

14

env
1 Get - ChildItem Env: | fl

or
get-variable

More

errpt
1 get - eventlog

More

export PS1=$
1 function prompt {"$ " }

More

nd
1 dir

* whatever * -recurse

More

for (start, stop, step)

1 for ($i = 1; $i -le 5; $i ++) { whatever }

More

head
1 gc file.txt | select - object -first 10

More

15

history
1 get - history

More

history | egrep -i ls
1 history | select commandline | where commandline -like '*ls*' | fl

More

hostname
1 hostname

More

if-then-else
1 if

( condition ) { do -this } elseif { do -that } else {do - theother }

More

if [ -f $FileName ]
1 if (test -path $FileName )

More

kill
1 stop - process

More

less
1 more

More

16

locate
1 no equivalent but see link

More

ls
1 get - childitem OR gci OR dir OR ls

More

ls -a
1 ls -force

More

ls -ltr
1 dir c:\ | sort - object -property lastwritetime

More

lsusb
1 gwmi Win32_USBControllerDevice

More

mailx
1 send - mailmessage

More

man
1 get -help

More

17

more
1 more

More

mv
1 rename -item

More

pg
1 more

More

ps -ef
1 get - process

More

ps -ef | grep oracle

1 get - process oracle

More

pwd
1 get - location

More

read
1 read -host

More

18

rm
1 remove -item

More

script
1 start - transcript

More

sleep
1 start - sleep

More

sort
1 sort - object

More

sort -uniq
1 get - unique

More

tail
1 gc file.txt | select - object -last 10

More

tail -f
1 gc -tail 10 -wait file.txt

More

19

time
1 measure - command

More

touch - create an empty le

1 set - content -Path ./ file.txt -Value $null

More

touch - update the modied date

1 set - itemproperty -path ./ file.txt -name LastWriteTime -value $(get -date)

More

wc -l
1 gc ./ file.txt | measure - object | select count

More

whoami
1 [ Security . Principal . WindowsIdentity ]:: GetCurrent () | select name

More

whence or type
1 No direct equivalent , but see link

More

unalias
1 remove -item -path alias : aliasname

More

20

uname -m
1 Get - WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem | select manufacturer , model

More

uptime
1 get - wmiobject -class win32_operatingsystem | select LastBootUpTime `

More

(line continuation)
1 ` (a backtick )

More

commands detail - a
alias (list all the aliases)
The Powershell equivalent of typing alias at the bash prompt is:
1 get - alias

alias (set an alias)

At its simplest, the powershell equivalent of the unix alias when its used
to set an alias is set-alias
1 set - alias ss select - string

However, theres a slight wrinkle.

In unix, you can do this
1 alias bdump ="cd /u01/app/ oracle / admin / $ORACLE_SID /bdump /"

If you try doing this in Powershell, it doesnt work so well. If you do this:
1 set - alias cdtemp "cd c:\ temp"
2 cdtemp

then you get this error:

1 cdtemp : The term 'cd c:\ temp ' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet , function ,
script file , or operable program . Check the spelling of the name , or if a path
was included , verify that the path is correct and try again.
2 At line :1 char :1
3 + cdtemp
4 + ~~~~~~
5
+ CategoryInfo
: ObjectNotFound : (cd c:\ temp: String ) [],
CommandNotFoundException
6
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

A way around this is to create a function instead:

1 remove -item -path alias : cdtemp
2 function cdtemp {cd c:\ temp}

21

22
You can then create an alias for the function:
1 set - alias cdt cdtemp

apropos
is one of my favourite bash commands, not so much for what it doesbut because I like the
word apropos.
apropos

Im not sure it exists on all avours of *nix, but in bash apropos returns a list of all the man pages
which have something to do with what youre searching for. If apropos isnt implemented on your
system you can use man -k instead.
Anyway on bash, if you type:
1 apropos process

then you get:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

AF_LOCAL [unix]
(7) - Sockets for local interprocess communication
AF_UNIX [unix]
(7) - Sockets for local interprocess communication
Apache2 :: Process
(3 pm) - Perl API for Apache process record
BSD :: Resource
(3 pm) - BSD process resource limit and priority functions
CPU_CLR [ sched_setaffinity ] (2) - set and get a process 's CPU affinity mask
CPU_ISSET [ sched_setaffinity ] (2) - set and get a process 's CPU affinity mask
CPU_SET [ sched_setaffinity ] (2) - set and get a process 's CPU affinity mask
CPU_ZERO [ sched_setaffinity ] (2) - set and get a process 's CPU affinity mask
GConf2
(rpm) - A process - transparent configuration system

The Powershell equivalent of apropos or man -k is simply get-help

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

get -help process

Name
---get - dbprocesses
show - dbprocesses
Debug - Process
Get - Process

Category
-------Function
Function
Cmdlet
Cmdlet

Module
------

Synopsis
-------Get processes for a particul ...
Show processes for a particu ...
Microso ... Debugs one or more processes ...
Microso ... Gets the processes that are ...

This is quite a nice feature of PowerShell compared to Bash. If get-help in Powershell shell scores
a direct hit (i.e. you type something like get-help debug-process) it will show you the help for that
particular function. If you type something more vague, it will show you a list of all the help pages
you might be interested in.
By contrast if you typed man process at the Bash prompt, youd just get
1 No manual entry for process

commands detail - b
basename
A rough PowerShell equivalent for the unix basename is:
1 dir <whatever > | select name

This depends on the le actually existing, whereas basename doesnt care.

A more precise (but perhaps less concise) alternative[1] is:
[System.IO.Path]::GetFileName('c:\temp\double_winners.txt')

Notes
[1] I found [System.IO.Path]::GetFileName after reading Power Tips of the Day - Useful Path Manipulations Shortcuts, which has some other useful commands

23

commands detail - c
cal
Theres no one-liner equivalent for the Linux cal, but theres a useful script, with much of the cal
functionality here :
http://www.vistax64.com/powershell/17834-unix-cal-command.html\char003C\relax{}/a>

cd
The PowerShell equivalent of cd is:
1 Set - Location

although there is a builtin PowerShell alias cd which points at set-location

cd ~
cd ~

moves you to your home folder in both unix and Powershell.

clear
The unix clear command clears your screen. The Powershell equivalent to the unix clear is
1 clear -host

PowerShell also has built-in alias clear for clear-host.

However, its possibly worth noting that the behaviour of the two commands is slightly dierent
between the two environments.
In my Linux environment, running putty, clear gives you a blank screen by eectively scrolling
everything up, which means you can scroll it all back down.
The Powershell Clear-host on the other hand seems to wipe the previous output (actually in the
same way that cmds cls command does.). This could be quite a signicant dierence, depending
on what you want to clear and why!
24

25

cp
The Posh version of cp is
1 copy -item

The following are built-in aliases for copy-item:

1 cp
2 copy

cp -R
To recursively copy:
1 copy -recurse

commands detail - d
date
The Powershell equivalent of the Unix date is
1 get -date

The Powershell equivalent of the Unix date -s is

1 set -date

I was anticipating doing a fairly tedious exercise of going through all the Unix date formats and then
working out the Powershell equivalent, but discovered the Powershell Team has eectively done all
this for me. There is a Powershell option -UFormat which stands for unix format.
So the Powershell:
1 date -Uformat '%D'
2 09/08/14

is the same as the *nix

1 date +'%D'
2 09/08/14

This is handybut I have found the odd dierence. I tried this for a demo:
Unix:
1 date +' Today is %A the %d of %B, the %V week of the year %Y. My timezone is %Z, and
here it is %R'
2 Today is Monday the 08 of September , the 37 week of the year 2014. My timezone is
BST , and here it is 17:24

Powershell:
1 get -date -Uformat 'Today is %A the %d of %B, the %V week of the year %Y. My
timezone is %Z, and here it is %R'
2 Today is Monday the 08 of September , the 36 week of the year 2014. My timezone is
+01 , and here it is 17:25

26

27
I presume the discrepancy in the week of the year is to do with when the week turns - as you can see
I ran the command on a Monday. Some systems have the turn of the week being Monday, others
have it on Sunday.
I dont know why \%Z outputs dierent things.and I cant help feeling Im being churlish pointing
this out. The -UFormat option is a really nice thing to have.

df -k
A quick and dirty Powershell equivalent to df -k is
1 Get - WMIObject Win32_LogicalDisk -filter " DriveType =3" | ft

A slightly prettier version is this function:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

function get - serversize { Param ( [ String ] $ComputerName )

Get - WMIObject Win32_LogicalDisk -filter " DriveType =3" -computer $ComputerName |
Select SystemName , DeviceID , VolumeName ,
@{Name =" size (GB)"; Expression ={"{0: N1}" -f($_.size /1gb)}},
@{Name =" freespace (GB)"; Expression ={"{0: N1}" -f($_. freespace /1gb)}}
}
function ss { Param ( [ String ] $ComputerName )
get - serversize $ComputerName | ft
}

.then you can just do:

1 $ ss my_server

.and get
1
2
3
4
5

SystemName
---------my_server
my_server
my_server

DeviceID
-------C:
D:
E:

VolumeName
---------OS
App

size(GB)
-------30.0
250.0
40.0

freespace (GB)
------------7.8
9.3
5.0

dirname
A good PowerShell equivalent to the unix dirname is
1 gi c:\ double_winners \ chelsea .doc | select directory

However, this isnt a direct equivalent. Here, Im telling Powershell to look at an actual le and then
return that les directory. The le has to exist. The unix dirname doesnt care whether the le
you specify exists or not. If you type in dirname /tmp/double_winners/chelsea.doc on any Unix server
it will return /tmp/double_winners, I think. dirname is essentially a string-manipulation command.
A more precise Powershell equivalent to the unix dirname is this

28

1 [ System .IO.Path ]:: GetDirectoryName ('c:\ double_winners \ chelsea .doc ')

.but its not as easy to type, and 9 times out of 10 I do want to get the folder for an existing le
rather than an imaginary one.

du
While I think there are implementations of du in PowerShell, personally my recommendation would
be to download Mark Russinovichs du tool, which is here:
Windows Sysinternals - Disk Usage
This is part of the Microsofts sysinternals suite.

commands detail - e
echo
is an alias in PowerShell. As you would expect its an alias for the closest equivalent to the
Linux echo:
echo

write-output

You use it as follows:

write-output "Blue is the colour"

As well as write-output there are a couple of options for use in Powershell scripts and functions:
write-debug
write-verbose

Whether these produce any output is controlled by commandline or environment ags.

echo -n
In bash, echo -n echoes back the string without printing a newline, so if you do this:
1 $ echo -n Blue is the colour

you get:
1 Blue is the colour$

.with your cursor ending up on the same line as the output, just after the dollar prompt
Powershell has an exact equivalent of echo -n. If you type:
1 PS C:\ Users \matt > write -host -nonewline "Blue is the colour "

.then you get this:

1 PS C:\ Users \matt > write -host -nonewline "Blue is the colour "
2 Blue is the colourPS C:\ Users \matt >

Note that -nonewline doesnt work if youre in the ISE.

29

30

egrep
The best PowerShell equivalent to egrep or grep is select-string:
1 select - string stamford blue_flag .txt

A nice feature of select-string which isnt available in grep is the -context option. The -context
switch allows you to see a specied number of lines either side of the matching one. I think this is
similar to SEARCH /WINDOW option in DCL.

egrep -i
Powershell is case-insensitive by default, so:
1 select - string stamford blue_flag .txt

would return:
blue_flag.txt:3:From Stamford Bridge to Wembley

If you want to do a case sensitive search, then you can use:

1 select - string

-casesensitive stamford blue_flag .txt

egrep -v
The Powershell equivalent to the -v option would be -notmatch
1 select - string -notmatch stamford blue_flag .txt

egrep this|that
To search for more than one string within a le in bash, you use the syntax:
1 egrep 'blue|stamford ' blue_flag .txt

This will return lines which contain either blue or stamford.

The PowerShell equivalent is to seperate the two strings with a comma, so:
1 $ select - string

stamford ,blue blue_flag .txt

returns:
1 blue_flag .txt :2:We 'll keep the blue flag flying high
2 blue_flag .txt :3: From Stamford Bridge to Wembley
3 blue_flag .txt :4:We 'll keep the blue flag flying high

31

| egrep -i sql
This is an interesting one, in that it points up a conceptual dierence between PowerShell and Bash.
In bash, if you want to pipe into a grep, you would do this:
1 ps -ef | egrep sql

This would show you all the processes which include the string sql somewhere in the line returned
by ps. The egrep is searching across the whole line. If the username is mr_sql then a line would
be returned, and if the process is sqlplus than a line would also be returned.
To do something similar in PowerShell you would do something more specic
1 get - process | where processname -like '*sql*'

So the string sql has to match the contents of the property processname. As it happens, get-process
by default only returns one text eld, so in this case its relatively academic, but hopefully it illustrates
the point.

env
The Linux env shows all the environment variables.
In PowerShell there are two set of environment variables:
- windows-level variables and
- Powershell-level variable
Windows-level variables are given by:
1 Get - ChildItem Env: | fl

PowerShell-level variables are given by:

1 get - variable

errpt
I think errpt is possibly just an AIX thing (the linux equivalent is, I think, looking at /var/log/message).
It shows system error and log messages.
The PowerShell equivalent would be to look at the Windows eventlog, as follows
1 get - eventlog -computername bigserver -logname application -newest 15

The lognames that I typically look at are system, application or security.

32

export PS1=$
In bash the following changes the prompt when you are at the command line
1 export PS1 ="$ "

The Powershell equivalent to this is:

function prompt { "$ " }

I found this on Richard Siddaways Blog

commands detail - f
nd
The bash find command has loads of functionality - I could possibly devote many pages to Powershell
equivalents of the various options, but at its simplest the bash find does this:
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find . -name '*BB.txt '

./ Archive / Script_WO7171BB .txt
./ Archive / Script_WO8541BB .txt
./ Archive / Script_WO8645_BB .txt
./ Archive / WO8559B / Script_WO8559_Master_ScriptBB .txt
./ Archive / WO8559B / WO8559_finalBB .txt
./ Archive / WO8559B / WO8559_part1BB .txt
./ Archive / WO8559B / WO8559_part2BB .txt

The simplest Powershell equivalent of the bash find is simply to stick a -recurse on the end of a dir
command
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PS x:\> dir

*BB.txt -recurse

Directory : x:\ Archive \ WO8559B

Mode
--------------------

LastWriteTime
------------28/02/2012
17:15
28/02/2012
17:17
28/02/2012
17:17
28/02/2012
17:15

Length
-----608
44
14567
1961

Name
---Script_WO8559_Master_ScriptBB .txt
WO8559_finalBB .txt
WO8559_part1BB .txt
WO8559_part2BB .txt

Length
-----2972
3662
3839

Name
---Script_WO7171BB .txt
Script_WO8541BB .txt
Script_WO8645_BB .txt

Directory : x:\ Archive

Mode
----------------

LastWriteTime
------------15/06/2011
08:56
14/02/2012
16:39
27/02/2012
15:22

If you want Powersehll to give you output that looks more like the Unix nd then you can pipe into
| select fullname
1 PS x:\> dir

*BB.txt -recurse | select fullname

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FullName
-------x:\ Archive \ WO8559B \ Script_WO8559_Master_ScriptBB .txt
x:\ Archive \ WO8559B \ WO8559_finalBB .txt
x:\ Archive \ WO8559B \ WO8559_part1BB .txt
x:\ Archive \ WO8559B \ WO8559_part2BB .txt
x:\ Archive \ Script_WO7171BB .txt
x:\ Archive \ Script_WO8541BB .txt
x:\ Archive \ Script_WO8645_BB .txt

for
for loop - start, stop, step
The equivalent of this bash:
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for (( i = 1 ; i <= 5 ; i++ ))

do
echo "Hello , world $i"
done
Hello ,
Hello ,
Hello ,
Hello ,
Hello ,

world
world
world
world
world

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is
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for ($i = 1; $i -le 5; $i ++)

{
write - output "Hello , world $i"
}
Hello ,
Hello ,
Hello ,
Hello ,
Hello ,

world
world
world
world
world

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for loop - foreach item in a list

For the Bash
for I in Chelsea Arsenal Spuds do echo $I done

the equivalent Powershell is:

foreach ($Team in ("Chelsea", "Arsenal", "Spuds")){write-output $Team}

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for loop - for each word in a string

For the bash:
1 london =" Chelsea Arsenal Spurs "
2 for team in $london ; do
echo " $team "; done

the equivalent Powershell is:

1 $London = " Chelsea Arsenal Spuds "
2 foreach ($Team in ( $London . split ())) {write - output $Team}

for loops - for lines in a le

Bash:
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for team in $(egrep -v mill london .txt)

> do
>
echo $team
> done

Posh:
1 select - string -notmatch millwall london .txt | select line | foreach {write - output
$_}

or:
1 foreach ($team in (select - string -notmatch millwall london .txt | select line))
{ $team}

for loop - for each le in a folder

Bash:
1 for LocalFile in *
2 do
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echo $LocalFile
4 done

Posh:
1 foreach ( $LocalFile in $(gci)) {write - output $LocalFile .Name}

10 commands detail - g
Not got any commands beginning with g yet.

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11 commands detail - h
head
The PowerShell equivalent of the *nix head is:
1 gc file.txt | select - object -first 10

history
The Powershell equivalent of history is:
1 get - history

There is a built in alias history

Its worth noting that history doesnt persist across PowerShell sessions, although if you search online
there are a couple of published techniques for making it persistent.
Its also perhaps worth noting that Powershell gives you a couple of extra bits of information, if you
want them:
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get - history | gm -MemberType Property

TypeName : Microsoft . PowerShell . Commands . HistoryInfo

Name
---CommandLine
EndExecutionTime
ExecutionStatus
ExecutionStatus
11 Id
12 StartExecutionTime

MemberType
---------Property
Property
Property
{get ;}
Property
Property

Definition
---------string CommandLine {get ;}
datetime EndExecutionTime {get ;}
System . Management . Automation . Runspaces . PipelineState
long Id {get ;}
datetime StartExecutionTime {get ;}

history | egrep -i ls
There is no direct equivalent of the shell functionality you get with set -o vi sadly. You can upand down- arrow by default, but if you want to search through your history then you need to do
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