Command naming and discovery
Commands in PowerShell are formed around verb and noun pairs in the form verb-noun.
This feature is useful when finding commands; it allows you to make educated guesses so that there is little need to memorize long lists of commands.
Verbs
The list of verbs is maintained by Microsoft. Verbs are words such as Add
, Get
, Set
, and New
. This formal approach to naming commands greatly assists in discovery.
You can view the verbs available in PowerShell using the following command:
Get-Verb
Verbs are grouped around different areas, such as data, life cycle, and security. Complementary actions such as encryption and decryption tend to use verbs in the same group; for example, the verb Protect
may be used to encrypt something and the verb Unprotect
may be used to decrypt something.
Verb descriptions
A detailed list of verbs, along with their use cases, is available on MSDN: