Commands in PowerShell

This post describes the commands used in PowerShell. Basically there are four types of commands as listed below.

• Cmdlets
• Functions
• Native
• Scripts

Cmdlets

Cmdlets (pronounced as command-let) support a normalized naming scheme with the verb-noun syntax. PowerShell has built-in cmdlets such as get-process, get-help and where-object. Developers also can create new cmdlets and register them with the PowerShell host. 

Functions

When the commands and statements are organized into a reusable chunk of code we name it as functions.

Native

Native commands run outside the PowerShell process. They are very simple. When you open a .doc file in Microsoft Word you are using a native command.

Scripts

Scripts let us save a commonly used set of commands to a file. Normally scripts have .ps1 extension.

Scripts are called from PowerShell by file name. If your PowerShell’s current location is the same as the location of the script you can execute the script by placing a “./”  in front of the script name.

Scripts will not run by default. PowerShell allows you to set a script execution policy. To set the Execution Policy

1. Type set-executionpolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

2. Click Enter to execute.