Powershell - cmdlets

A cmdlet or "Command let" is a lightweight command used in the Windows PowerShell environment. The Windows PowerShell runtime invokes these cmdlets at command prompt. You can create and invoke them programmatically through Windows PowerShell APIs.

Cmdlet vs Command

Cmdlets are way different from commands in other command-shell environments in the following manners −

• Cmdlets are .NET Framework class objects; and not just stand-alone executables.

• Cmdlets can be easily constructed from as few as a dozen lines of code.

• Parsing, error presentation, and output formatting are not handled by cmdlets. It is done by the Windows PowerShell runtime.

• Cmdlets process works on objects not on text stream and objects can be passed as output for pipelining.

• Cmdlets are record-based as they process a single object at a time.

Getting Help

The first step is to go to the Get-Help command which gives you an explanation about how to give a command and its parameter.