What is windows Powershell?

Windows PowerShell is the extensible command-line interface shell and scripting language that provides a command-line environment for interactive exploration and administration of computers. In addition, it provides developers with an opportunity to script these commands, enabling them to be automated, scheduled, and run multiple times.

Originally, when Microsoft released MS-DOS, it was not used as a shell. It was entirely a standalone operating system. The initial and original Microsoft Windows release was a graphical shell that sat on top of the MS-DOS operating system. Once Windows NT was introduced, this situation was reversed. MS-DOS became the shell in the graphical Windows operating system. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were basically developed for users with less technical background who were looking for a friendly interface. Because graphical interfaces are limited to fewer functions, once you hit their limitations you will start relying on the command-line interface. For example, with a GUI, if you want to rename all the extensions of a group of files and suffix each file with the current day’s timestamp, it will take a while because you have to select and rename each file individually. Therefore, command-line interfaces and their commands are very commonly used for administrative tasks and automation. They also help to consolidate functionality in batches, through MS-DOS batch files.

command.com was used as the command-line user interface in early versions of Microsoft Windows. cmd.exe was introduced in Windows NT. When administrators reached the limit of command-line batch files, they started looking for a language that could do both command shell functions and programming. Microsoft introduced the Visual Basic

scripting language, which helped administrators initially. However, there were limitations in VBScript as well. Administrators started relying on Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and COM objects introduced later by Microsoft for many other administrative functions. The administrative command-line interface started becoming more complicated with internal DOS commands, external DOS commands, batch files, executables, VBScripts, WMI, and so forth. It was with all of this in mind that Microsoft developed and introduced Windows PowerShell.