Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The Get-Help cmdlet has a number of switches that control precisely what help information is displayed."

A block of code is set as follows:

param($name)
    $PowerShellVersion=$PSVersionTable.PSVersion
    return "We're using $PowerShellVersion, $name!"

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

#find largest 5 items in the directory tree
dir -recurse |
  tee-object –Variable Files |
  sort-object Length | 
  tee-object –Variable SortedFiles |
  select-object -last 5

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

Get-ChildItem "c:\program files" –include *.dll –recurse

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "It features a button labeled Scan Script, a gear button for options, and a grid for results."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.