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Did you know that console output can contain special icons like checkmarks? All you need to do is set the console to a TrueType font like "Consolas". To display special characters, use the decimal or hexadecimal character code, for example: [Char]8730 [Char]0x25BA...

You may know that each string object has a method called Trim() that trims away whitespace both from the beginning and end of a string: $text = ' Hello ' $text.Trim() Trim() and Line Breaks A lesser known fact is that Trim() will also eat away leading and trailing...

Understanding Control Flow: break, continue, return, and exit Do you know off-hand what "break", "continue", "return", and "exit" do? These are powerful language constructs, and here is a test function to illustrate how different their effects are: 'Starting' function...

Get-ItemProperty can easily read registry values, but you do not get back any information about the registry value type. Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion' Alternative Approach Using .NET Here is an alternate approach that uses...

PowerShell ISE In the PowerShell console, you can pipe commands to the old-fashioned “more.com”, or better yet, to Out-Host –Paging. This will display data page by page, asking for a key press to continue: PS> Get-Process | more PS> Get-Process | Out-Host...

PowerShell 3.0 and later Sometimes it is important to know just how long a command takes. For example, to monitor web site response times, you could use Invoke-WebRequest. Measure-Command measures execution time. $url = 'http://www.powershell.com' # track execution...

PowerShell 3.0 and later Out-GridView is a very useful cmdlet to output results to an extra window. Unlike outputting to the console, Out-GridView will not cut off anything. And it has a not-so-obvious way of easily copying the information to other applications. Try...

All PowerShell versions Typically, NTFS permissions in the file system are inherited. You can, however, add explicit permissions to files and folders. To find out where inheritance was changed and direct security settings have been added, you can use this code sample:...

All Versions Typically, to access COM objects, these objects need to register themselves in the Windows Registry, and PowerShell needs the registered ProgID string to load the object. Here is an example: $object = New-Object -ComObject Scripting.FileSystemObject...

GroupPolicy Module When you create a new Group Policy, you can set a comment (or description). There is no apparent way, however, to change the description later. Here is code that allows you to retrieve a group policy, then read and/or change the description. Make...

All PowerShell versions With Get-Acl, you can output the security information from files and folders as plain text in SDDL format (Security Descriptor Definition Language): $FolderToRead = 'C:\folder1' $securityDescriptor = Get-Acl -Path $FolderToRead...