Chapter 16: Powershell Jump-Start for VBScripters

Overview

PowerShell's flexibility and high profile makes it attractive to many Windows administrators including those who've never worked with any kind of scripting before. But, for those who've worked with VBScript in the past, we'll give you a bit of a jump-start.

Let's quickly clear up a potential point of confusion: There's no easy, set way to convert a VBScript to a PowerShell script. But why would you want to? If the VBScript works, keep it! After all, VBScript isn't going anywhere. However, in this chapter we will present a sort of "jump-start" guide to PowerShell using VBScript as a basis. That way, if you do know VBScript, you'll be able to start writing new scripts in PowerShell a bit more quickly. So, this chapter is about converting you to PowerShell, not your scripts.

Let's begin by acknowledging that PowerShell is very different from VBScript. You will need to learn new technologies and concepts to use PowerShell effectively. However, there are some similarities-especially in PowerShell's scripting language-that can be a bit easier to learn if you see them side-by-side with their VBScript counterparts. So in this chapter we'll cover the similarities between PowerShell and VBScript.

As we begin, keep in mind that PowerShell is a management shell. It isn't intended for logon scripts, so there are a lot of topics such as mapping drives and checking for group membership that we will not cover in this chapter. PowerShell's best use is not as a logon script processor. For the time being, stick with VBScript or KiXtart for those scripts.