Windows PowerShell Programming, Scripting, Error Handling, and Debugging - Professional SQL Server 2008 Administration with Windows PowerShell - page 44

❑ Writing to a file

❑ Error handling

❑ Debugging

PowerShell Scripts
PowerShell scripts are cmdlets put together in a .ps1 file. This is similar to any programming language.
The basic requirement of any programming language is input commands, processing commands, and
output commands. Other commands, such as error handling and debugging, are also required.

PowerShell provides all the basic requirements for programming PowerShell scripts, and all these com-
mands available in the form of cmdlets are object oriented.

The following list contains the basic requirements of any programming language:

❑ Input

❑ User input from the console

❑ User input as parameters

❑ File input

❑ Processing

❑ Operators

❑ Expressions

❑ Loop constructs

❑ Variables

❑ Output

❑ Output to users on the console

❑ File output

❑ Error Handling

❑

Debugging

Before jumping into input and output, it's useful to take a look at where the input data and intermediate
processing results are stored, namely, the variables . All types of variables and how they store information
are discussed in the following section.

PowerShell Variables
PowerShell variables are not the same as variables in other languages where only scalar values are stored.
Rather, PowerShell variables hold the entire object. They are not just a placeholder for scalar values.