Windows 7 PowerShell

Comparison of cmdlets with similar commands

The following table contains a selection of the cmdlets that ship with PowerShell noting the most similar commands in other well known command line interpreters.

Windows PowerShell (Cmdlet)	Windows PowerShell (Alias)	cmd.exe / COMMAND.COM (MS-DOS, Windows, OS/2, etc.)	Bash (Unix, BSD, Linux, Mac OS X etc.)	Description
Get-Location	gl, pwd	cd	pwd	Display the current directory/present working directory.
Set-Location	sl, cd, chdir	cd, chdir	cd	Change the current directory
Clear-Host	cls, clear	cls	clear	Clear the screen[35]
Copy-Item	cpi, copy, cp	copy	cp	Copy one or several files / a whole directory tree
Get-Help	help, man	help	man	Help on commands
Remove-Item	ri, del, erase, rmdir, rd, rm	del, erase, rmdir, rd	rm, rmdir	Delete a file / a directory
Rename-Item	rni, ren	ren, rename	mv	Rename a file / a directory
Move-Item	mi, move, mv	move	mv	Move a file / a directory to a new location
Get-ChildItem	gci, dir, ls	dir	ls	List all files / directories in the (current) directory
Write-Output	echo, write	echo	echo	Print strings, variables etc. to standard output
Pop-Location	popd	popd	popd	Change the current directory to the directory most recently pushed onto the stack
Push-Location	pushd	pushd	pushd	Push the current directory onto the stack
Set-Variable	sv, set	set	set	Set the value of a variable / create a variable
Get-Content	gc, type, cat	type	cat	Get the content of a file
Select-String		find, findstr	grep	Print lines matching a pattern
Get-Process	gps, ps	tlist,[36] tasklist[37]	ps	List all currently running processes
Stop-Process	spps, kill	kill,[36] taskkill[37]	kill	Stop a running process
Tee-Object	tee	n/a	tee	Pipe input to a file or variable, then pass the input along the pipeline

Examples

Examples are provided first using the long-form canonical syntax and then using more terse UNIX-like and DOS-like aliases that are set up in the default configuration.

• Stop all processes that begin with the letter "p":
  

PS> get-process p* | stop-process

PS> ps p* | kill

• Find the processes that use more than 1000 MB of memory and kill them:
  

PS> get-process | where-object { $_.WS -gt 1000MB } | stop-process

PS> ps | ? { $_.WS -gt 1000MB } | kill

• Calculate the number of bytes in the files in a directory:
  

PS> get-childitem | measure-object -property length -sum

PS> ls | measure length -s

PS> dir | measure length -s

• Determine whether a specific process is no longer running:
  

PS> $processToWatch = get-process notepad
PS> $processToWatch.WaitForExit()

PS> (ps notepad).WaitForExit()

• Change the case of a string from lower to upper:
  

PS> "hello, world!".ToUpper()

• Insert the string "ABC" after the first character in the word "string" to have the result "sABCtring":
  

PS> "string".Insert(1, "ABC")

• Download a specific RSS feed and show the titles of the 8 most recent entries:
  

PS> $rssUrl = "http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/rss.aspx"
PS> $blog = [xml](new-object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($rssUrl)
PS> $blog.rss.channel.item | select title -first 8

$x=new-object xml;$x.load("http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/rss.aspx");$x.rss.channel.item|select title -f 8

• Sets $UserProfile to the value of the UserProfile environment variable
  

PS> $UserProfile = $env:UserProfile

• Cast a .Net Namespace, and call a method exposed by the cast
  

PS> [System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("Hello, World!")

• Run a command line executable, with arguments.
  

PS> [Array]$arguments = "-h", "15", "www.google.com"
PS> tracert $arguments

File extensions

• PS1 – Windows PowerShell shell script
  
• PS1XML – Windows PowerShell format and type definitions
  
• PSC1 – Windows PowerShell console file
  
• PSD1 – Windows PowerShell data file (for Version 2)
  
• PSM1 – Windows PowerShell module file (for Version 2)
  

Application support

SnapIns and hosts

Application	Version	Cmdlets	Provider	Management GUI
Exchange Server	2007	402	Yes	Yes
Windows Server	2008	Yes	Yes	No
Microsoft SQL Server	2008	Yes	Yes	No
System Center Operations Manager	2007	74	Yes	No
System Center Virtual Machine Manager	2007	Yes	Yes	Yes
System Center Data Protection Manager	2007	Yes	No	No
Windows Compute Cluster Server	2007	Yes	Yes	No
Microsoft Transporter Suite for Lotus Domino[38]	08.02.0012	47	No	No
Microsoft PowerTools for Open XML[39]	1.0	33	No	No
IBM WebSphere MQ[40]	6.0.2.2	44	No	No
Quest Management Shell for Active Directory[41]	1.1	40	No	No
Special Operations Software Specops Command[42]	1.0	Yes	No	Yes
VMware Infrastructure Toolkit[43]	1.5	157	No	No
Internet Information Services[44]	7.0	54	Yes	No
Ensim Unify Enterprise Edition[45]	1.6	Yes	No	Yes
Windows 7 Troubleshooting Center[46]	6.1	Yes	No	Yes
Microsoft Deployment Toolkit