Chapter 3: Leveraging PowerShell Providers

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Overview

After completing this chapter, you will be able to:

• Understand the role of providers in Windows PowerShell

• Use the Get-PSProvider cmdlet

• Use the Get-PSDrive cmdlet

• Use the Get-Item cmdlet

• Use the Set-Location cmdlet

• Use the file system model to access data from each of the built-in providers

Windows PowerShell provides a consistent way to access information external to the shell environment. To do this, it uses providers. These providers are actually .NET programs that hide all the ugly details to provide an easy way to access information. The beautiful thing about the way the provider model works is that all the different sources of information are accessed in exactly the same manner. This chapter demonstrates how to leverage the PowerShell providers. All the scripts mentioned in this chapter can be found in the corresponding scripts folder on the CD.