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Your First Commands

Scope: the Verb-Noun pattern, getting help, and running your first script. All examples were run with PowerShell 7.5.

Verb-Noun: the naming system

Every PowerShell command is Verb-Noun:

Get-Process
Get-Service
Get-ChildItem
Set-Location

Approved verbs (Get, Set, New, Remove, Start, Stop, Test...) keep the whole ecosystem guessable. Don't know the command? Guess the verb and noun — you're often right.

The three discovery commands

Get-Command *service*      # find commands with "service" in the name
Get-Help Get-Process       # read the manual
Get-Help Get-Process -Examples   # skip to the examples (the useful part)

Get-Command finds things, Get-Help explains them, Get-Member (coming up) inspects objects. These three answer most "how do I...?" questions without leaving the terminal.

Tab completion works everywhere — type Get-Pro and hit Tab.

Your first pipeline

Get-Process | Sort-Object CPU -Descending | Select-Object -First 5

Read it left to right: get all processes, sort by CPU usage, take the top 5. No text parsing — CPU is a real property. (See Objects and the Pipeline for the full story.)

Running a script

Create hello.ps1:

Write-Host "Hello, world!"

.\hello.ps1

Note the .\ — like Bash, PowerShell doesn't run scripts from the current directory without an explicit path (a security habit).

On Windows, if it refuses to run, that's the execution policy — see Installing PowerShell.

Write-Output vs Write-Host

Write-Output "hello"   # sends to the pipeline (the default)
Write-Host "hello"     # writes to the screen only

This distinction matters: Write-Host output can't be captured or piped — it's for humans only. In functions that return data, use Write-Output (or just leave the value on a line by itself). Write-Host is for progress messages.

Comment-based help

<#
.SYNOPSIS
    Says hello.
.DESCRIPTION
    A longer explanation of what the script does.
.EXAMPLE
    .\hello.ps1
#>
Write-Host "Hello, world!"

Get-Help .\hello.ps1 reads this block. Writing it for shared scripts is good manners.

Check

  • [ ] You can find a command with Get-Command and read its examples with Get-Help -Examples
  • [ ] You can run a .ps1 script with .\
  • [ ] You can say when to use Write-Host vs Write-Output

Next: Variables and Types.