Tobias @ PowerShellPlus

-STA and WPF scripting

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:46:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #7: Support for -STA and Windows Presentation Foundation

Check out the latest PS Team blog series covering WPF scripting in PS V2: http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2008/05/22/wpf-powershell-part-1-hello-world-welcome-to-the-week-of-wpf.aspx

A lot of people are using PS V2 already, and so far PowerShell Plus has worked great with V1 and V2. And now it even supports "STA" single threaded appartment model! So you can use PS+ to write and debug WPF scripts, too!

Script to HTML

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:21:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #6: Pasting script and console content to a blog

if you wrote a cool script and would like to show it off to others, you can. PowerShell Plus supports color-coded script code transfer. Launch the editor (press CTRL+E), load your script, then copy it to your blog. Coincidentally, I'd like to share a script with you this way:

$helper = New-Object -COMObject

Persisting History

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:10:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #5: History tracking

I dont know about you, but I use command history a lot. It's just handy to press ArrowUp and get back my previous commands. Unfortunately, consoles generally seem to be a bit forgetful, and once you close powershell, all your history is gone. Of course you could export and re-import history using the PowerShell cmdlets, but that won't bring back the true console history and the ability to walk back your previous commands with the arrow keys. Bummer.

In PowerShell+, that's better. When you close and re-open PowerShell+, all your history is still there. Cool, eh? What's even better, PS+ automatically streamlines your history, too, so when you close PS+, it only remembers unique commands, and it won't remember commands that resulted in an error.

You can actua

Variable Monitor with Ibuprofen Capsules and other Goodies

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:51:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #4: Live Variable Monitor

There are tons of automatic PowerShell variables, and of course you can define your own. To keep track and explore variables, invoke the live variable monitor, simply by pressing CTRL+T. You get a list of all variables in current scope, and they are marked with star-symbols.

To understand what the symbols are for, click on the down-arrow next to the funnel-button. With the funnel, you filter the var list. You can for example exclude all automatic variables and focus on new or changed variables only. This way, the list only shows stuff that changes. Right next to the funnel, there's a text box. You can enter any regular expression here to further enhance filtering.

For example, to get a quick overview of all your preferences, enter Pref into the text b

Console Tricks

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:44:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #3: Cool Console Tricks

PowerShell Plus sports a real console, and that's good because it provides 100% PowerShell compatibility. However, our console is on steroids. Here are some things you can do with it:

Intellisense-like support: Simply type $host and enter a dot, and there you go: intellisense-like menus open to help you code. These menus don't popup always automatically. On .NET namespaces, you might want to press TAB to invoke them:

[System.Console]

And when you add a double-colon, again there are menus, showing you the static members.

[System.Console]::

Another cool trick: drag a file into the console (

Minimode #1 and #2

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:42:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #2: The various purist minimodes...

I know PowerShell-Users love the pure stuff, and they love the console. Except sometimes it is nice to have some bells and whistels to help with object models and intellisense.

This is why PS+ includes two things: a Minimode and - huh? - another Minimode!

Minimode #1 can be invoked by CTRL+M. It turns all toolbars off and makes the console semi-transparent so you can see what is going on in the background.

Minimode #2 can be invoked by ALT+SPACE. It leaves the console as it is but hides all toolbars. Press ALT again to get them back.

Executing native commands in PS+ console

tobias.weltner@scriptinternals.de — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:37:00 GMT

In this blog, I cover features in PowerShell Plus. Feature #1: By pressing SHIFT + ENTER you can run commands within the old-style cmd.exe and avoid problems with backwards compatibility easily.

PowerShell is "supposed" to be 100% backwards compatible but in reality it isn't. It can't. It uses some special characters such as parenthesis that modify the way a line is parsed. So the following simple command will fail in PowerShell:

echo This won't work (because of the parenthesis)

wmic service where (startmode='Auto' and started=true) get /value

To make working in PowerShell a one-stop thing, I added the capability to execute native commands in the old cmd.exe environment simply