My buddy Brett asked me about this a few weeks ago and I never managed to get to him .. sorry buddy! So I decided to come back to everyone.
After playing with powershell a bit you get an idea of the power you have. So something that really makes it rock is the ability to pipe the output from a command to another command.
So I have a few to show you.
OUT-HTMLThis will Pipe the output of command to a HTML table. You can get the source from Viveks web site (http://www.viveksharma.com/techlog/attache/out-html.web.txt)
Okay so:PS > dir *.ps1
Directory: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\FileSystem::C:\Mode LastWriteTime Length Name---- ------------- ------ -----a--- 31/08/2006 14:32 2037 format-hex.ps1-a--- 24/07/2006 22:16 1713 For_Loops.ps1
Becomes (this is just a snip):
PS > dir *.ps1 | out-html
PS C:\_> dir *.ps1 | out-html<style><!--body { font: Helvetica }table { font: 12pt Helvetica; border: 0px}td { border: 1px solid lightgray; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px }p.header { font: 16pt Helvetica; color: DarkBlue }p.normal { font: 14pt Helvetica; }--></style></head><body><p class="header" align='center'><strong>Output Generated by paulfl at: 31/08/2006 15:56:02 on machine paulfl-m400 </strong></p><p class='normal' align='center'><strong>Command line:</strong> dir *.ps1 | out-html</p><br><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center"><tr> <td align="center" style="background-color: darkblue"><p class="table" style="color: white"><b>PSChildName</b></p></td> <td align="center" style="background-color: darkblue"><p class="table" style="color: white"><b>PSDrive</b></p></td> <td align="center" style="background-color: darkblue"><p class="table" style="color: white"><b>PSIsContainer</b></p></td> <td align="center" style="background-color: darkblue"><p class="table" style="color: white"><b>PSParentPath</b></p></td> <td align="center" style="background-color: darkblue"><p class="table" style="color: white"><b>PSPath</b></p></td>
OUT-IEThis is cool, as it lets you output the command to an IE window. You can see where I am coming from, can’t you. Combine out-html and out-ie and you get a nice table in a new IE window. out-ie is quite a simple bit of code, and vivek details it here: http://www.viveksharma.com/techlog/2006/05/09/technet-webcast-follow-up-out-html-out-ie/
so when I do the following, it list out a dir *.ps1 into a new IE window in a formatted table. How cool is that!
PS > dir *.ps1 | out-html | out-ie
OUT-GRIDThis is quite cool. I found the source here: http://abhishek225.spaces.live.com/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c11_blogpart_blogpart=blogview&_c=blogpart&partqs=amonth%3D5%26ayear%3D2006, right down the bottom of the page.
So the following command will open up a data grid application and display the results!
PS > dir *.ps1 | out-grid
AND FINALLYOnce you have collated all the out– you want, you should copy them in to C:\Program Files\Windows PowerShell\v1.0 That way you can use them at any PS> prompt!
I have seen a few more too, but I can’t find them on the web, so if anyone can find: out-chart and out-email let me know and I will post them up