PowerShell scripts every developer should know [closed]

Question

Windows PowerShell is out a quite long time now. In comparison to the the good old windows shell it's much more powerful. Are there any scripts you use to speed up and simplify your every day work as an developer? If you can do magic with PowerShell -> please share it with us!

Update Not really a script, but also very useful are PowerShell Community Extensions. The package contains a lot of new Cmdlets and PowerShell modifications.

Answer 1

I put together a bunch of scripts to work with Subversion at the command line. Most of them just use the --xml option to put various information in object form. Here are a couple of examples:

function Get-SvnStatus( [string[]] $Path   = ".", 
                        [string]   $Filter = "^(?!unversioned|normal|external)", 
                        [switch]   $NoFormat )
{
    # powershell chokes on "wc-status" and doesn't like two definitions of "item"
    [xml]$status = ( ( Invoke-Expression "svn status $( $Path -join ',' ) --xml" ) -replace "wc-status", "svnstatus" ) `
        -replace "item=", "itemstatus="

    $statusObjects = $status.status.target | Foreach-Object { $_.entry } | Where-Object { 
        $_.svnstatus.itemstatus -match $Filter 
    } | Foreach-Object {
        $_ | Select-Object @{ Name = "Status"; Expression = { $_.svnstatus.itemstatus } }, 
                           @{ Name = "Path";   Expression = { Join-Path ( Get-Location ) $_.path } }
    } | Sort-Object Status, Path

    if ( $NoFormat )
    {
        $statusObjects
    }
    else
    {
        $statusObjects | Format-Table -AutoSize
    }
}

function Get-SvnLog( [string] $Path = ".", 
                     [int]    $Revision, 
                     [int]    $Limit = -1, 
                     [switch] $Verbose, 
                     [switch] $NoFormat )
{
    $revisionString = ""
    $limitString = ""
    $verboseString = ""

    if ( $Revision )
    {
        $revisionString = "--revision $Revision"
    }

    if ( $Limit -ne -1 )
    {
        $limitString = "--limit $Limit"
    }

    if ( $Verbose )
    {
        $verboseString = "--verbose"
    }

    [xml]$log = Invoke-Expression "svn log $( $path -join ',' ) --xml $revisionString $limitString $verboseString"

    $logObjects = $log.log.logentry | Foreach-Object {
        $logEntry = $_

        $logEntry | Select-Object `
            @{ Name = "Revision"; Expression = { [int]$logEntry.revision } },
            @{ Name = "Author"; Expression = { $logEntry.author } },
            @{ Name = "Date"; 
               Expression = {
                   if ( $NoFormat )
                   {
                       [datetime]$logEntry.date
                   }
                   else
                   {
                       "{0:dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss}" -f [datetime]$logEntry.date
                   }
               } },
            @{ Name = "Message"; Expression = { $logEntry.msg } } | 
        Foreach-Object {
            # add the changed path information if the $Verbose parameter has been specified
            if ( $Verbose )
            {
                $_ | Select-Object Revision, Author, Date, Message,
                    @{ Name = "ChangedPaths"; 
                       Expression = {
                           $paths = $logEntry.paths.path | Foreach-Object {
                               $_ | Select-Object `
                                   @{ Name = "Change"; 
                                      Expression = { 
                                          switch ( $_.action )
                                          {
                                              "A" { "added" }
                                              "D" { "deleted" }
                                              "M" { "modified" }
                                              "R" { "replaced" }
                                              default { $_.action }
                                          }
                                      } },
                                   @{ Name = "Path"; Expression = { $_."#text" } }
                           }

                           if ( $NoFormat )
                           {
                               $paths
                           }
                           else
                           {
                               ( $paths | Sort-Object Change | Format-Table -AutoSize | Out-String ).Trim()
                           }
                       } 
                     }
            }
            else
            {
                $_
            }
        }
    }

    if ( $NoFormat )
    {
        $logObjects
    }
    else
    {
        $logObjects | Format-List
    }
}

I have these aliased to svns and svnl, respectively. I talk about a few others here.