Bruce Payette Richard Siddaway - Windows PowerShell in Action, Third Edition

The second edition of this book was based on PowerShell v2. Since then weve seen a number of PowerShell releasesthe current one is v5.1 with v6 in beta as we write. PowerShell use has grown astronomically to the extent that the PowerShell community is large enough to support independent conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia. User groups are available in all parts of the world.

PowerShell v2 was a big release bringing modules, remoting, and jobs. Subsequent releases have been as big in terms of their impactPowerShell v3 brought PowerShell workflows and the CIM cmdlets; PowerShell v4 brought Desired State Configuration; and PowerShell v5 brought the ability to write classes in PowerShell. Those are only the headline itemsunder the covers there are a host of other changes that extend and improve PowerShell. All of this change demands a new edition of the book.

One big difference to the previous editions is that this book requires two authors. Between us we bring you the experience and knowledge of creating and developing PowerShell coupled with extensive practical experience using PowerShell to solve real-world problems. Even with two authors creating the third edition has been a mammoth task. We had to drastically prune the material in the second edition to make room for the new material we had to cover. At one point, we even discussed the book spanning two volumes! We settled on a single volume and even though weve had to put some topics as being out of scope weve covered all of the new functionality.

So why write the book? The answer is the same now as it was thenwe wanted the PowerShell community to have a way to see inside the box and have a more intimate insight into the goals and motivations behind PowerShell. Although PowerShell draws heavily from existing technologies, it combines them in novel ways. This leads to misunderstandings which then turn into urban myths, like PowerShell does X because its designers were kitten-eating aliens. (Trust ustheyre not.) Weve also added material covering the practical use of PowerShell to solve your problems.

Speaking at conferences, and answering questions on forums, shows that there were a number of questions that were being asked repeatedly. These questions would arise as a result of prior language experience that the user had or a lack of understanding of a new feature in PowerShell. Typically, a simple explanation was all it took to clear up the confusion. Unfortunately, we couldnt keep answering these questions over and over on a one-to-one basis. That couldnt scale. There needed to be a way to gather this information in one place. This third edition of Windows Powershell in Action is our attempt to continue to address that problem.

Its amazing how much power comes out of the synergy of all the technologies underlying PowerShell. We see this in the internal uses of PowerShell at Microsoft, the talks at conferences describing what people are doing in their organizations, and what the community has done with it. And so, a continuing goal of this edition was to try to foster that creativity by conveying just how capable PowerShell is.

A final word from Bruce: This is the book I wanted to read. I love programming languages and the best books are the ones that explain not only what but also why. Look at the books that continue to sell year after year: Kernighan and Ritchies The C Programming Language, Stroustrups book on C++, and Ousterhouts book on TCL. The TCL book in particular, which describes a very early version of the TCL language, has never been updated, and yet it continues to sell. Why? Because these books give the reader something more than technical detail. They convey a sense of the overall design and some element of the intent of the designer.