concept tab completion in category powershell

This is an excerpt from Manning's book PowerShell in Depth, Second Edition. Login to get full access to this book.

Most PowerShell hosts—including the console and ISE provided by Microsoft—provide a feature called tab completion. It’s a way of letting the shell type for you. For example, open a PowerShell console window and type Get-P. Then, press the Tab key on your keyboard. Keep pressing Tab, and you’ll see PowerShell cycle through all of the available commands that match what you’d already typed. Press Shift+Tab to cycle backward.

4.2.2. Parameter name tab completion

The good news is that tab completion works for parameter names, too. Type Get-S, press Tab multiple times to complete the command name to Get-Service, and then type –c and press Tab. PowerShell will fill in –ComputerName for you. You can still truncate your parameter names when you’re typing, or one or two extra keystrokes on the Tab key will get you the fully spelled-out name that’s easier to read. Not sure about any of the parameters? After entering a cmdlet name, if you type a dash and then press Tab you can cycle through all the parameters.