Richard Siddaway's Blog

When: Tuesday, Apr 20, 2010 7:30 PM (BST)Where: Virtual *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Notes We will cover the new module functionality introduced with PowerShell v2 with a biref look at some of the functionality available in Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 Richard Siddaway has invited you to attend an online meeting using Live Meeting.Join the meeting.Audio InformationComputer AudioTo use […]

Author: William R. Stanek Publisher: Microsoft Press ISBN: 978-0-7356-2711-6 This is the second edition that has been updated for Windows Server 2008 R2. As usual I am applying my three main criteria for judging a book: · Is it technically accurate? · Does deliver the material it claims to deliver? · Is worth the cost […]

I’ve blogged on a number of occasions on how to use the DNS WMI provider. Life just got easier with the release of DnsShell.  Its a PowerShell 2.0 module containing cmdlets for working with DNS. Underneath the covers there is a lot of WMI involved. The module is still a work in progress but already […]

Thanks to Shay for pointing out some typos in my last post.  The correct bits are     [alias("alias_name")]     [datatype]     [AllowNull()]     [AllowEmptyString()]     [AllowEmptyCollection()]     [ValidateCount(1,n)]     [ValidateLength(1,m)]     [ValidatePattern("[A-Z][A-Z]A-Z][0-9]")]     [ValidateRange(0,10)]     [ValidateScript({$_ -lt 4})]     [ValidateSet("red","blue","green")]     [ValidateNotNull()]     [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]     Apologies for the error

I thought it would be worth while looking at the range of parameters we can use with our functions.  We saw the mandatory parameter last time but that is just a starter.  If we examine the range of parameters we see that there are some to control how we receive the parameters and a big […]

Advanced functions are one of the major new features of PowerShell. They enable functions written in PowerShell to behave in the same way as cmdlets especially in the way they work on the pipeline. However when you look at the help files PS> get-help about*functions* | select Name Name —- about_functions about_functions_advanced about_functions_advanced_methods about_functions_advanced_parameters about_functions_cmdletbindingattribute […]

I often find myself calculating the difference between two dates – finally time for a function 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 function Get-DateDiff { param (     [CmdletBinding()]         [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]     [datetime]$date1,         [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]     [datetime]$date2 )          if ($date2 -gt $date1){$diff = $date2 – $date1}     else {$diff = $date1 – $date2}     $diff    […]

Today’s must read http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/powershell-goes-into-space/

I had a very nice email from the Microsoft MVP award program today informing me that I had been re-awarded as a PowerShell MVP. Its a great honour to receive the MVP award and thank you to Microsoft for the award and to the PowerShell community for supporting my efforts.