PowerShell can quickly search text files for a string of characters:
Select-String -Path .\servers.txt -Pattern "abc"
For this example, we used Select-String to search a list of server names in a text file called 'servers.txt', then used the -Pattern parameter to designate the string we're looking for.
PowerShell returned the filename, the line number where the pattern was found, and the full line.
Note: case is not sensitive here. A search for "ABC" will return the same result.
PowerShell can easily create zip archives of files and folders using the Write-Zip cmdlet.
Get-ChildItem C:\MyScripts\*.ps1 | Write-Zip -OutputPath C:\Temp\PS-scripts.zip
Here we zipped up all the PowerShell scripts written or downloaded for archive purposes:
Get-ChildItem also has a -Recurse parameter if we want to zip up subfolders, and the Write-Zip cmdlet has a -IncludeEmptyDirectories parameter if we want to, well, include empty directories.
Long, long ago, computers mastered the art of multiplying numbers. A more interesting trick is to multiply string. PowerShell can do this easily:
"winner " * 3
Note the trailing space at the end of the string. Without it, the text would all run together in an unbroken line.
PowerShell can send beeps to the console:
[console]::beep[500,300]
It's nice to throw two or three of these at the end of a long-running script to alert when the script is finished.
The first number is the pitch of the beep, and the second number is the duration of the beep in milliseconds.
