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Hello, and welcome back.

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We're in the middle of learning about how to get the

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most of the PowerShell help system.

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In the last module,

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I should you had update help and start getting help from PowerShell.

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Next, I want to teach you how to interpret what you find.

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The better that you can read help, the more you can get out of it,

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and the easier I think it will be to figure out why a command

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doesn't work the way you think it should.

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Alright, so let's get to it.

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Here's the first part of help for the Get‑Service command.

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The NAME, SYNOPSIS, and DESCRIPTION should all be self evident.

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I want to focus on helping you decipher all this stuff under SYNTAX.

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These are the different ways that you can use the command.

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The first thing I want to point out is that based on the help,

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I can see that there are three different way to use Get‑Service.

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Under SYNTAX , you can see three different groupings of parameters.

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These are referred to as parameter sets.

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Each set shows the name of the command, Get‑Service,

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followed by a collection of parameters.

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Now these collections are unique.

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Although some parameters can appear in multiple parameter sets,

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there's usually something in each set that makes it unique.

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You can't mix and match parameters, that's very important.

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If you try to run Get‑Service using both ‑Name and ‑DisplayName,

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you'll get an error saying that PowerShell can't

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figure out which parameter set to use.

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All parameters in PowerShell start with a dash.

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So we have ‑DependentServices and ‑DisplayName.

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Following the parameter name is an indication of

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what type of valve you you can use.

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Now everything in PowerShell is a type of object.

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After a DisplayName,

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you can see that PowerShell is telling you that it can accept strings.

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Now a string is just a fancy way of saying text.

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The double square brackets after the type name indicate that the

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parameter will take a collection or group of values.

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Typically, these are separated by commas.

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Based on the help,

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‑DisplayName will let me specify a group of service display names,

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again separated by commas.

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Another type of parameter is a switch.

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Look at that ‑RequiredServices.

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There's no value after it.

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It switches like an on/off switch, or you can think true/false.

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If you use the parameter name,

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then the command's code will handle the rest of the operation,

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you don't have to do anything else.

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Now I'll tell you this because eventually you're going to

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come across commands that have parameters that feel and look

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like they should be switches, but for some reason,

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the person or team that wrote the command,

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they want you to specify true or false.

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The new ADUser command is a good example.

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It has a parameter called ‑Enabled, which you can use to enable the account.

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Now I think it should be a switch,

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and all I should need to do is just run ‑Enabled,

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but nope, I have to type ‑Enabled $true.

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When you look at the help, you'll see that the parameter wants a boolean value.

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That's why you need to read the help and not make any assumptions.

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The last thing to cover is the square brackets surrounding parameters.

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This indicates the item in brackets is optional.

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You don't have to use ‑DependentServices or ‑Include,

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but if you want to use ‑DisplayName,

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you have to type the parameter name because it is not in brackets.

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Now compare that to the ‑Name parameter.

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The entire parameter is optional, and if you want to use the parameter,

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you don't need to type ‑Name.

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The parameter name is optional.

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This is referred to as a positional parameter,

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and I'll come back to this in a few minutes.

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In meantime, here's another example.

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Here you can see the help for Get‑Process,

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and you'll notice that the ‑Id parameter is not in brackets,

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meaning you have to type the name if you want to use it,

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and it can accept a collection of Int32 types,

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or integers.

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And how do I know that?

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See that double square brackets?

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That's how we know.

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‑IncludeUserName is a switch and doesn't need any values.

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So how about a pop quiz.

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Looking at that help,

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do you think that you can use ‑IncludeUserName and

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‑FileVersionInfo in the same command?

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No, of course not.

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There is no parameter set that includes both parameters.

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If you tried that, you'd see the error message,

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Parameter set cannot be resolved using the specified name parameters.

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One or more parameters issued cannot be used together or an

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insufficient number of parameters were provided.

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So PowerShell tells you very clearly, hey,

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I have no idea what you're trying to do because you're

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trying to mix and match parameters.

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By the way, the common parameters that you see there,

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and we saw it with the help for Get‑Services as well,

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that's really a placeholder for a set of parameters that all cmdlets have.

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These are parameters like ‑Verbose or ‑ErrorActionPreference.

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You will learn more about those as you learn more about PowerShell.

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We really won't get into them in this course.

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Or if you want a little exercise, to try this.

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See if you can find a help topic that explains how to use them,

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or what they're all about.

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Otherwise,

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let's dive a little deeper and look at a few

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specific parameters for Get‑Process.

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Sometimes you need to get a bit more detail about a parameter

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than from what you can see under SYNTAX.

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The help command lets you specify one or more parameters,

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and you can use wild cards.

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This is the same information that you see when you

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run help with the ‑Full parameter.

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Now uses this technique all the time when I need to

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look at a parameter and more detail.

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Now here you can see that Id is Required.

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Under Id, see Position?

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The Id parameter is defined as named.

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This means you have to type the name of the parameter,

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or at least enough of the parameter name so PowerShell can

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figure out what parameter you want to use.

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Or, if you look at the SYNTAX, you'll see that ‑Id is not in square brackets.

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That's another way that you'll know.

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Now you can't just type Get‑Process 123 because PowerShell won't know

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that you want the Id parameter to use the value 123.

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You have to type Get‑Process space ‑Id space 123.

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Compare this to the Name parameter.

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This has a position of 0, meaning the first position.

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If you type Get‑Process space Notepad,

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PowerShell will assign Notepad as a value for the ‑Name parameter.

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Some commands like Get‑Service and Get‑Process have default behaviors.

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You don't have to specify any parameters or values.

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If the command does have a required parameter, you'll get prompted.

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If you aren't sure how to use the command, well, you know, just run it.

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Of course not in a production setting.

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In the help there,

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the pipeline input setting tells you how the command will

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process objects piped into the command.

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Now we won't get into this in great detail in this course,

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although I will give you a taste of this in the demo.

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And the last thing I want to point out is the Accept wildcard setting.

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This should indicate if you can use the *wildcard with

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the value Id doesn't use wild cards, but ‑Name does.

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One thing to be aware of is that the value may not always be accurate.

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A lot of the help content is auto generated and then polished up by a

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human writer, but mistakes can happen; however,

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don't spend a lot of time worrying about all of this.

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It never hurts to try a parameter using a wildcard.

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If it doesn't work, you'll just get a message saying that it won't work.

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You can verify then by looking at the help to see, oh, yep, I'm

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right, that doesn't use a wildcard, or oh,

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it does use a wildcard.

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So you can see here in the help if it will or not, but sometimes

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you just have to try it just to know for sure.

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The more you look at help, the easier all of this will be.

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And when I say look at help, I mean diving down to this level of detail.

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Don't just glance at the SYNTAX and expect it to make sense because it probably won't until you have much more experience with PowerShell.