Maybe Start-Transcript would work for you. First stop it if it’s already running, then start it, and stop it when done. $ErrorActionPreference=”SilentlyContinue” Stop-Transcript | out-null $ErrorActionPreference = “Continue” Start-Transcript -path C:\output.txt -append # Do some stuff Stop-Transcript You can also have this running while working on stuff and have it saving your command line sessions … Read more
Normally, for internal commands PowerShell does wait before starting the next command. One exception to this rule is external Windows subsystem based EXE. The first trick is to pipeline to Out-Null like so: Notepad.exe | Out-Null PowerShell will wait until the Notepad.exe process has been exited before continuing. That is nifty but kind of subtle … Read more
UPDATED – January 2021 It’s possible to store in a profile.ps1 file any PowerShell code to be executed each time PowerShell starts. There are at least 6 different paths where to store the code depending on which user has to execute it. We will consider only 2 of them: the “all users” and the “only … Read more
PowerShell v5.0 adds Compress-Archive and Expand-Archive cmdlets. The linked pages have full examples, but the gist of it is: # Create a zip file with the contents of C:\Stuff\ Compress-Archive -Path C:\Stuff -DestinationPath archive.zip # Add more files to the zip file # (Existing files in the zip file with the same name are replaced) … Read more
In CMD, ‘&&’ means “execute command 1, and if it succeeds, execute command 2”. I have used it for things like: build && run_tests In PowerShell, the closest thing you can do is: (build) -and (run_tests) It has the same logic, but the output text from the commands is lost. Maybe it is good enough … Read more
This is the variable for the current value in the pipe line, which is called $PSItem in Powershell 3 and newer. 1,2,3 | %{ write-host $_ } or 1,2,3 | %{ write-host $PSItem } For example in the above code the %{} block is called for every value in the array. The $_ or $PSItem … Read more
For PowerShell 3.0 and greater: Get-ChildItem -Directory You can also use the aliases dir, ls, and gci For PowerShell versions less than 3.0: The FileInfo object returned by Get-ChildItem has a “base” property, PSIsContainer. You want to select only those items. Get-ChildItem -Recurse | ?{ $_.PSIsContainer } If you want the raw string names of … Read more
Yup. Measure-Command { .\do_something.ps1 } Note that one minor downside of Measure-Command is that you see no stdout output. [Update, thanks to @JasonMArcher] You can fix that by piping the command output to some commandlet that writes to the host, e.g. Out-Default so it becomes: Measure-Command { .\do_something.ps1 | Out-Default } Another way to see … Read more
In PowerShell v5+, there is an Expand-Archive command (as well as Compress-Archive) built in: Expand-Archive C:\a.zip -DestinationPath C:\a
In Windows Explorer, just go to the Address Bar at the top (keyboard shortcuts: Alt+D or Ctrl+L) and type powershell or powershell_ise and press Enter. A PowerShell command window opens with the current directory.