PowerShell Tips & Tricks for Developers

Question

What are the some of the PowerShell tips & tricks that you use to increase your productivity as a .NET developer?

Answer 1

Easily try out String.Format formats

Great article on String.Format formats by SteveX - String Formatting in C#

1. Using String.Format method

   PS> [string]::Format("{0:C}", 1234567890)
   $1,234,567,890.00
   PS> [string]::Format("{0:(###) ###-####}", 8005551212)
   (800) 555-1212
   

2. Using PowerShell "-f" format operator

   PS> "{0:C}" -f 1234567890 
   $1,234,567,890.00 
   PS> "{0:(###) ###-####}" -f 8005551212 
   (800) 555-1212
   

Answer 2

Find out length of a text - copy & paste text into powershell and get length of string

• I usually use short cut to paste (ALT+SPACE+E+P) into PowerShell console.

PS> "Does this text fit into varchar(50) column?".length
43

Answer 3

Find out Assembly Qualified Name of a type (Assembly should be loaded into AppDomain for this to work for assemblies that are not in GAC)

Update: Simpler version (by Richard in the comment)

PS> ([System.String]).AssemblyQualifiedName

• Taken from How can I retrieve an assembly’s qualified type name?

PS> [System.String] | select { $_.UnderlyingSystemType.AssemblyQualifiedName }
$_.UnderlyingSystemType.AssemblyQualifiedName
---------------------------------------------
System.String, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089

Answer 4

Find an ASCII code for a character or vice versa

• Works on Unicode characters as well.

PS> [int][char]'a'
97
PS> [int][char]'A'
65

PS> [char][int]97
a
PS> [char][int]65
A

#"Sung" in Korean
PS> [int][char]'승'
49849

Answer 5

I just found out a couple of days ago that PowerGUI comes with a source-level debugger. I had been ignoring PowerGUI because it appears to be mostly a sysadmin tool that isn't very useful to me, but the debugger that comes with it is awesome.

Answer 6

I find PowerShell quite handy when I need to test if my regular expression matches the text.

$r = [regex]'date\s\d+-\d+-\d+\s\d+:\d+'
$r.Matches('date 2008-01-01 10:20 some text date 2008-01-02 11:13') | % { $_.value }

Keith Hill added some code that uses some conversion to base 64. So, it's what I have in my profile as well:

function FromBase64($str) {
    [system.text.encoding]::utf8.getstring( [system.convert]::frombase64string($str))
}
function ToBase64($str) {
    [system.convert]::tobase64string([system.text.encoding]::utf8.getBytes($str))
}

Answer 7

I use PowerShell to explore and test the functionality of DLL's I've not used before. Loading an assembly in PowerShell and using Get-Member to examine it is a quick way to dig into different types.

Answer 8

Add a "PowerShell at Solution" to VS's tools menu:

Tools | External Tools... and as follows:

Title: PowerShell at SolutionM
Command: %WinDir%\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe
Arguments: -noexit -command "set-title ('PowerShell Solution ' + (Get-Item $(SolutionFileName)).BaseName)"
Initial Directory: $(SolutionDir)

Set-Title is a helper function in my profile (simplified version):

function Set-Title {
  param([string]$title)
  $Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = $title
}

Answer 9

PowerShell as Calculator

PS>1 + 1
2
PS>23 * -3 / [Math]::Log10(256)
-28.6516298184035

Answer 10

# Search for references in VS solution files:
gci . -r *.??proj | select-string '<Reference Include="System\.Windows\.Forms'

Get-ExceptionForHR 0x80004004  # Requires PowerShell Community Extension (PSCX)

Get-ExceptionForWin32 10  # Requires PSCX

PS> '<a><b></a></b>' | Test-Xml  # Require PSCX
False

PS> Format-Hex .\EchoArgs\EchoArgs.csproj -count 8 -Columns 8 # Requires PSCX

Address:  0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7 ASCII
-------- ----------------------- --------
00000000 EF BB BF 3C 3F 78 6D 6C ...<?xml

Get-Clipboard | Split-String -sep `n | Out-Clipboard -Width 999 # Requires PSCX

# Check if binary is .NET assembly or not
PS> Test-Assembly $pshome\powershell.exe # Requires PSCX
False

$b64 = ConvertTo-Base64 Foo.dll -NoLineBreak

# Experimenting with Xml and XPath
PS> $url = 'http://keithhill.spaces.live.com/feed.rss'
PS> $rss = [xml](new-object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString($url)
PS> $rss.SelectNodes('//title')

#text
-----
PowerShell Function Names
Image File Resizing Using the PowerShell Community Extensions
Customizing PowerShell ISE with Yank Line CustomMenu Item
Effective PowerShell: The Free eBook
Effective PowerShell Item 14: Capturing All Output from a Script

FYI, PowerShell Community Extensions was written to be the MKS Toolkit/cygwin add-on for PowerShell. It's focus is slight more towards developers than it is admins.

Answer 11

Coming to Powershell from bash, I found this article for getting history via .profile useful. Persist Command History