Announcing the General Availability of SQL Diagnostic Manager for MySQL 8.9.7

Occasionally you come across lists (arrays) with empty elements. What’s the best way of removing empty elements? Creating a Software Inventory Using the Registry Let’s first focus on a common use case: the code below creates a software inventory by reading the...

Removing BOM from Unicode Text Files Using PowerShell BOM (Byte Order Mask) is a characteristic byte sequence used in some Unicode encoded text files. If you receive text files with BOM that need to be processed by systems not supporting BOM, here is a way how...

Ensuring Correct Text File Encoding in PowerShell Text files can be stored using different encodings, and to correctly reading them, you must specify the encoding. That’s why most cmdlets dealing with text file reading offer the -Encoding parameter (for example,...

psconf.eu – PowerShell Conference EU 2019 – June 4-7, Hannover Germany – visit www.psconf.eu There aren’t too many trainings around for experienced PowerShell scripters where…

Every Windows installation has a unique UUID that you can use to distinguish machines. While computer names can change, the UUID won’t: PS> (Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_ComputerSystemProduct).UUID 4C4C4544-004C-4710-8051-C4C04F443732 Universal Unique Identifier...

In the previous tip we illustrated how Get-Date can take a format string and convert DateTime values to strings. The string conversion always uses your local language though. That might not always be what you need. Let’s check out the problem, and a solution for it:...

Using Microsoft Print to PDF from PowerShell Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 finally come with a built-in PDF printer called “Microsoft Print to PDF” that you can use from PowerShell to create PDF files. Run this to check your PDF printer: $printer = Get-Printer...

Understanding the FileSystemWatcher and Its Limitations In the previous tip we introduced the FileSystemWatcher and illustrated how it can miss filesystem changes when your handler code takes too long. How to Use FileSystemWatcher Correctly To use the...

A FileSystemWatcher can monitor a file or folder for changes, so your PowerShell code can immediately be notified when new files are copied to a folder, or when files are deleted or changed. Example of Synchronous Monitoring Often, you find example code for...

Lines like $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition can be useful to determine the folder in which the current script is stored, i.e. to access other resources located in the same folder. Easier Alternatives Since PowerShell 3 However, ever since PowerShell 3, there have...

Most old VBS scripts can be easily translated to PowerShell. The key command in VBS is “CreateObject” which lets you access system libraries. PowerShell translates “CreateObject” to “New-Object -ComObject”, yet the object model and member names stay the same: This VBS...

Running PowerShell in WinPE Environments PowerShell can run inside WinPE environments. If you’d like to detect whether your PowerShell script runs inside a WinPE environment, you can simply check whether a special registry key exists: function Test-WinPE { return...

Starting with PowerShell 5, cmdlets like Extract-Archive can extract the content of ZIP files to disk. However, you can always extract only the entire archive. Extracting Specific Files Using .NET Methods If you’d rather like to extract individual files, you can...

PowerShell by default does not support the native cmd.exe command such as „dir“. Instead, it uses historic aliases called “dir” to point you to the closest PowerShell cmdlet: PS C:\> Get-Command -Name dir | ft -AutoSize CommandType Name Version Source -----------...

Use the PowerShell progress Bar Here is a simple example using the PowerShell progress bar. The code displays a progress bar counting down a break. Simply adjust the number of seconds you’d like to pause. You could use this example for displaying breaks in classes or...