Let me continue with a series of blog posts discussing technical reviews conducted between 2022 and the present year. In a previous post, I highlighted “Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches” as the ideal starting point for anyone delving into PowerShell.
If you’ve never read any book from the “Learn <Something> in a Month of Lunches” series, these books are unique because each chapter contains clear explanations, examples, and practical lab tasks at the end to reinforce the chapter’s topic. Such books are designed to streamline your learning process. As evident from the table of contents, there are approximately 30 chapters or fewer. By dedicating just one day to each chapter, you can master the technology in just one month.
Having reviewed this book myself, I found it immensely valuable. The authors, PowerShell team members Travis Plunk and Tyler Leonhardt, alongside Microsoft MVP James Petty, have updated the third edition to encompass the latest version of PowerShell, which includes its expansion into multiple platforms such as Linux and macOS. Consequently, the book is no longer confined to Windows.
Let’s examine the table of contents to see what you’ll be able to accomplish with PowerShell after reading the book.
:: Table of Contents ::
1 Before you begin
2 Meet PowerShell
3 Using the help system
4 Running commands
5 Working with providers
6 The pipeline: Connecting commands
7 Adding commands
8 Objects: Data by another name
9 A practical interlude
10 The pipeline, deeper
11 Formatting: And why it’s done on the right
12 Filtering and comparisons
13 Remote control: One-to-one and one-to-many
14 Multitasking with background jobs
15 Working with many objects, one at a time
16 Variables: A place to store your stuff
17 Input and output
18 Sessions: Remote control with less work
19 You call this scripting?
20 Improving your parameterized script
21 Using regular expressions to parse text files
22 Using someone else’s script
23 Adding logic and loops
24 Handling errors
25 Debugging techniques
26 Tips, tricks, and techniques
27 Never the end
App. PowerShell cheat sheet
Is this book for you? If you’re an Administrator, DevOps Engineer, or even a developer, you’ll undoubtedly find the book extremely useful and easy to follow. It covers topics such as handling errors, loops, filtering and comparison, input and output, and much more. After reading at least two editions myself, I highly recommend this book as one of my favorites, given its well-structured content (chapter-labs-summary). Rating 10/10.
UseIT | Roman Levchenko 