PowerShell help system
The PowerShell help system is an integrated documentation facility for discovering and learning about PowerShell commands, language constructs, and features.
Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches: Fourth Edition, Covers Windows, Linux, and macOS
A help system is an integrated facility that provides software documentation and assistance for discovering and understanding available commands and features.
- How it is used
- Supports command discovery, command usage, command composition, and troubleshooting during interactive PowerShell administration.
- How deep it goes
- Explains Get-Help, Help, wildcard searches, about topics, paging, and syntax diagnosis, without detailing help implementation internals.
- Examples
- Uses Help *event, Help *object, Help Register-ObjectEvent, Help *common, Get-Help about_*, and Update-Help.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose command errors and discover, inspect, and combine PowerShell commands without relying first on external searches.
Learn PowerShell Scripting in a Month of Lunches, Second Edition: Write and organize scripts and tools
The PowerShell help system is the built-in documentation facility for learning about commands, language constructs, and other PowerShell features.
- How it is used
- Use PowerShell’s help system to learn features, validate examples, and begin automation without relying on unverified scripts.
- How deep it goes
- Provides targeted documentation and About topics, while stopping short of complete language coverage.
- Examples
- Uses about_if and about_comparison_operators as examples of language documentation.
- What you can do after
- Apply it via PowerShell’s help system to investigate features and develop tools suited to your environment.
Related concepts
- Update-Helpused by · Update-Help is a PowerShell cmdlet that downloads and installs updated help files for available commands.
- Get-Helpused by · Get-Help is a PowerShell cmdlet that displays documentation and help topics for commands and other PowerShell elements.
- PowerShellused by · PowerShell is Microsoft's cross-platform command shell and scripting language for administering computer systems and automating tasks.
- commanduses · A command is an instruction or request representing an operation for a system or component to interpret, handle, or execute.
- help topichas part · An About topic is a PowerShell help document explaining a language feature, command behavior, background concept, or capability.
- Get-Membercontrasts with · Get-Member is a PowerShell cmdlet that displays the members and type information of input objects.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.