PowerShell

Recently, I have been playing with Powershell, which is an incredibly powerful tool. Below is a very good summary of it, from http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2007/05/11/free-powershell-book.aspx

With Windows PowerShell (previously Monad Shell, MSH) the software group administrators want to give us a shell under Windows that we can use to write as many scripts as our hearts desire in order to control our systems. Windows PowerShell follows a completely new concept than that used by text-oriented shells such as Bash. Aims of developing Windows PowerShell Windows PowerShell is a new Windows command line shell that was specifically developed for system administrators. The shell consists of an interactive input line and script environment that can be used either alone or in combination. In contrast to most shells that accept and return text, Windows PowerShell is based on an object model made available by .NET Framework 2.0. This fundamental change in the environment allows for completely new tools and methods for managing and configuring Windows. Windows PowerShell introduces the idea of cmdlets (pronounced “commandlet”).

A cmdlet is a simple command line tool that is integrated into the shell and executes a single function. Although you can use cmdlets in isolation, their power is more obvious when used in combination to perform complex tasks.