Your First Commands¶

Open your PowerShell terminal (type pwsh in any terminal, or launch it from the Start menu on Windows) and follow along.

The Prompt¶

When PowerShell is ready for input, you'll see a prompt like:

PS C:\Users\Alice>

PS indicates PowerShell, and the path shows your current working directory.

Running Your First Cmdlet¶

Type a cmdlet name and press ++enter++:

Get-Date

Output:

Sunday, March 15, 2026 5:09:24 PM

PowerShell returned a DateTime object. You can access its properties:

(Get-Date).Year    # → 2026
(Get-Date).DayOfWeek  # → Sunday

Discovering Commands¶

Find cmdlets by verb or noun¶

# All commands that "Get" something
Get-Command -Verb Get

# All commands related to "Service"
Get-Command -Noun Service

# Search by partial name
Get-Command *network*

Read the built-in help¶

# Basic help
Get-Help Get-Process

# Detailed examples
Get-Help Get-Process -Examples

# Full parameter documentation
Get-Help Get-Process -Full

Update help files first

Run Update-Help once (as administrator) to download the latest help content from the internet.

Working with Files and Directories¶

# Where am I?
Get-Location          # or: pwd

# List files in current directory
Get-ChildItem         # or: ls, dir

# List including hidden files
Get-ChildItem -Force

# Change directory
Set-Location C:\Users  # or: cd C:\Users
Set-Location ..        # go up one level
Set-Location ~         # go to home directory

# Create a file
New-Item -Path .\hello.txt -ItemType File -Value "Hello, World!"

# Read it back
Get-Content .\hello.txt

# Delete it
Remove-Item .\hello.txt

Variables¶

Variables start with $:

$name = "Alice"
$age  = 30
$pi   = 3.14159

Write-Host "Hello, $name! You are $age years old."

Getting Help On Any Object: `Get-Member`¶

One of the most important habits in PowerShell is inspecting objects with Get-Member:

Get-Process | Get-Member

This shows every property and method available on a process object. Once you know the properties, you can access them:

$proc = Get-Process -Name pwsh
$proc.Id              # Process ID
$proc.WorkingSet64    # Memory in bytes
$proc.CPU             # CPU seconds used

Tab Completion¶

Press ++tab++ to auto-complete cmdlet names, parameters, and paths:

Get-Ch ++tab++ → Get-ChildItem
Get-ChildItem - ++tab++ → cycles through parameters
cd C:\Us ++tab++ → cd C:\Users\

Press ++ctrl+space++ in VS Code for full IntelliSense.

Common Keyboard Shortcuts¶

Shortcut	Action
++tab++	Auto-complete
++ctrl+c++	Cancel running command
++ctrl+z++	Undo (in the line editor)
++up++ / ++down++	Command history
++ctrl+r++	Reverse-search history
++f7++	Show history in a list
`cls` or `Clear-Host`	Clear the screen

Aliases¶

PowerShell has many aliases so existing muscle memory from cmd/bash still works:

Alias	Full Cmdlet
`ls` / `dir`	`Get-ChildItem`
`cd`	`Set-Location`
`pwd`	`Get-Location`
`cat`	`Get-Content`
`echo`	`Write-Output`
`ps`	`Get-Process`
`kill`	`Stop-Process`
`rm` / `del`	`Remove-Item`
`cp`	`Copy-Item`
`mv`	`Move-Item`
`curl` / `wget`	`Invoke-WebRequest` (aliases removed in PS 7+)
`man`	`Get-Help`

Aliases in scripts

Avoid aliases in scripts and functions. Use the full cmdlet name for readability and portability — especially when sharing with others.

Next Step¶

Understanding the Pipeline