One of the more potentially confusing aspects of PowerShell is its use of a provider. A provider gives access to specialized data stores for easier viewing and management. The data appears in a drive in PowerShell.
We warn you that some of this chapter might seem a bit remedial for you. We expect that you’re familiar with the filesystem, for example, and you probably know all the commands you need to manage the filesystem from a shell. But bear with us: we’re going to point things out in a specific way so that we can use your existing familiarity with the filesystem to help make the concept of providers easier to understand. Also, keep in mind that PowerShell isn’t Bash. You may see some things in this chapter that look familiar, but we assure you that they’re doing something quite different from what you’re used to.