As I hope you're realizing,
the best way to learn how to use help is to actually use it.
Remember,
all of my demos are part of the course download, so if you
want to try things out for yourself,
be sure to grab that, or just open a PowerShell prompt and start exploring.
As you explore PowerShell,
you'll see that often all you need to do is just run the command
by its name, like Get‑Process or Get‑Service.
The get commands are generally safe to run, so that's a good place to start.
If the command has a required parameter, PowerShell will prompt you.
Now you can always press Ctrl so you can break out of the
command if you then want to go back and look at the command
help for a bit more detail.
As you work with PowerShell, you'll see that it wants to do stuff.
It wants to complete your command based on the
parameters or information you provide, and this is a nice thing,
because even if you get an error, you might also get a useful result.
However,
if you don't get the result you are expecting, or PowerShell can't
run the command, then you need to go back and read the help and
look at the syntax, look at the examples, look at the parameter
details, look at everything.
There may be an example that leads you down the right path.
And finally, I need to remind you that PowerShell help is not perfect.
Believe it or not, Microsoft can make mistakes.
Some of the PowerShell help, like the syntax, is auto‑generated.
There are advanced ways to use get command to discover command
parameters, but this isn't the course to get into that.
Most of the help, though,
especially the description and examples, are written by people.
I will tell you that this is a hard job, and mistakes, obviously, can happen.
There might be a syntax error in an example,
or maybe a parameter change but the help file hasn't been
updated yet to reflect that change.
Don't get me wrong, I think the quality of PowerShell help is really quite
high, but mistakes and errors can still occur. In the next module, I'll show
you some ways that you might mitigate those challenges,
but really,
the best thing that you can do is try. Run the command. Hopefully you
have a safe test area where you can try things out.
The best way to learn PowerShell is by doing. That wraps it up for this module.
Dive into the help for a few commands that interest you.
Try them out if you can.
Then, stretch your legs,
refill your drink, and come on back for the last part of Getting PowerShell Help!