Command Syntax Part 1
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Intro
Now we’re gonna dive into Command Syntax. If you have never seen any of this before this could be one of the more challenging sections. What I mean is you may need to review this section or lectures more than once.
Let’s go ahead and type help get-eventlog -showwindow, press return. Go ahead and click settings, now make sure all these check boxes are checked and click ok.
Go ahead scroll down to the SYNTAX section. Your gonna use the syntax section of show-window. What I’ve done is copied the Syntax section into my scripting pane.
Command Structure
Every Cmdlet in PowerShell follows this basic structure
Verb-Noun -param1 <argument1> -param2 <arg2, arg3> separated by a comma.
What are all these brackets, hyphens, angle brackets, braces all about? I’ve already shown you what parameters are. If you recall parameters always start with a hyphen. Parameters are options that describe what the cmdlet will do.
To make this a little easier to understand, its lunchtime here in America so I want you to think of any cmdlet, or in this example the get-eventlog cmdlet as a pizza. I know that sounds a little crazy, but bear with me. Now we all know that when you go to any pizza shop you can order just cheese pizza or you can order a bunch of toppings, like this.
It may be easier for you to understand it this way. Get-Eventlog is the plain pizza and the parameters are the toppings. Just remember that parameters always start with a hyphen, and you can add parameters to build functionality into your cmdlet.
Ok, now that we have a good idea how parameters are used. Let’s move on to parameter sets.
Parameter Sets:
If you see a command name more than once,that means that there'll be at leastone unique parameter in each set.
Notice in the first set there are several unique parameters such as -logname, - instanceId, -After, -Before, -Newest and several others.
In the second set you have -AsString and -List.
Notice also the -computername is parameter listed in both sets. That means you can use the -computername parameter when using either set.
In our example type get-eventlog -logname application, we’re using the first parameter set.
Now try and use a parameter from the second set. Click space, type dash.
Try using -list- You’ll see -list is not there. If you type -list and press return. You’ll get an error.
So, what I am showing you is that if you start using the parameters from one set you can’t jump over and use parameters from the other set. Those parameters won’t work.
Arguments < >
The angle brackets indicate an argument. What’s inside the angle brackets is called a value type.
In our example we type get-eventlog, space dash logname.
The logname parameter has a value type called <string> which can be an alpha-numeric value.
Press the space bar In this case it’s a text string such as a single word like security or application, press enter.
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