PowerShell replaces cobbled-together assemblies of third-party management tools with an elegant programming language and a powerful scripting shell for the Windows environment. In the tradition of Manning's ground breaking "In Action" series, this book comes from right from the source. Written by Bruce Payette, one of principal creators of PowerShell,

Windows PowerShell in Action

shows you how to build scripts and utilities to automate system tasks or create powerful system management tools to handle the day-to-day tasks that drive a Windows administrator's life. Because it's based on the .NET platform, PowerShell is also a powerful tool for developers and power users.

Windows PowerShell in Action was written by Bruce Payette, one of the founding members of the Windows PowerShell team, co-designer of the PowerShell language and the principal author of the PowerShell language implementation. The book enables you to get the most out of the PowerShell environment. Using many examples, both small and large, this book illustrates the features of the language and environment and shows how to compose those features into solutions, quickly and effectively.

This book is designed for anyone who wants to learn PowerShell and use it well. Rather than simply being a book of recipes to read and apply, this book gives you the deep knowledge about how PowerShell works and how to apply it.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 34 Ratings

Excellent coverage of the spirit of PowerShell, good examples, falls short as reference. - 2010-08-29
Reviewer Rating:
Because the book is written by a core member of the PowerShell team, it has a lot of nice insights as to why PS works as it does and plenty of practical examples to jump start your use of it. The writing is clear and witty for a tech book. I would give it 5 stars but it is not a great reference as it is not written to be one and the index falls a little short.

The Index Needs Work - 2010-08-18
Reviewer Rating:
Overall, I was happy with this book. The text is approachable yet fairly complete. One thing that drives me crazy, though, is the terrible index. I hope it's improved in the second edition.

Example: Suppose you want to look up the Get-Member cmdlet. The index has an entry for "get-member" (page 221), then for "Get-Member cmdlet" (pages 253, 299, 305), and finally "Get-Members cmdlet" (page 133).

Powershell is not case-sensitive, so "get-member" and "Get-Member" are identical. Meanwhile there is no "Get-Members" (with an 's') cmdlet. All of these should be a single index entry for "Get-Members cmdlet." I'm not positive, but I suspect the index creation was partially automated, and not carefully proofread.

Great Book - 2010-08-01
Reviewer Rating:
PowerShell is a language that tries to be everything to everybody, so
it's full of both cool features and dark corners. But you can write a
good book about any language, and "Windows PowerShell In Action" is
pretty good. It does suffer from a minor glitch: like the language,
the book tries to be everything to everybody. This is perhaps not
surprising, since the book was written by one of the key designers of
the language.

In the end, the book is great for someone who wants to become an
expert PowerShell user. If you, like me, are interested more in the
design of the language and its innovative features than in
practicalities, you may be somewhat disappointed. That information is
in the book, but the wonderful tidbits are hidden in unexpected
places, so you really have to read the whole thing cover-to-cover,
which involves skimming over a lot of stuff you probably don't care
about.

But let me repeat: as a way to learn PowerShell, this book is
well-organized and presents just the right level of detail. Once you
read it, you will know what you are doing.

One of my more used books - 2010-02-19
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book back in 2007, as I was curious about powershell - which was version 1 at the time and this book was a key book to understanding it.

I got a few books on powershell, and the style of this book at first seemed very choppy, but as I learned more about the language it became more understandable the way things were done in this book. The author has so much information about the way that the language was developed that it made certain things distracting.

I have seen the author on the MSDN Channel 9 video's and that also probably helped me understand how the author voices things in a certain way.

The book is very useful, and the most dogeared of my powershell books. There are better style books out there (for version 1).
Now with Powershell 2.0 there will be a new batch of books, and I understand that the author is working on a 2nd edition for Powershell 2.0.

There is a lot to powershell, and it presents a learning curve, but you will find that the time invested will bring a payoff. It feels like a swiss army knife for admins and developers. This book may give nuances to the language you might not find in other books. So I definitely would recommend this book, more so if it is a 2nd edition - for Powershell 2.0.

Learning Powershell - 2010-02-16
Reviewer Rating:
I am new to Powershell and I found the book easy to understand and follow. Great work!

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