Introduction to Windows Powershell for SharePoint 2010

Problem : Lately, there has been growing demand for information about Windows Powershell and SharePoint. The reason is because it is so powerful and easy to use. The built-in commands can handle administrative tasks that are just not possible through Central Administration. Although, Powershell can be used for different technologies we will concentrate on the usage of Windows Powershell for SharePoint starting with a brief introduction.
Solution : If you don’t have Powershell installed you can get it from here. If you are using SharePoint 2010 then it’s a pre-requisite to have this; therefore it will be installed during the installation.
Open Powershell by finding it in your Programs or run "powershell.exe". Once loaded you will see a basic Powershell command prompt

To get a list of all the built-in commands (cmdlets) in Powerhsell just type get-command format-list. (Note: Powerhsell is not case sensitive).
--------
get-command format-list
--------
Notice there is a symbol in the command with a vertical bar "", this is called a Pipe. The Pipe is used to separate different parts of the command. The different parts can be used to include options, formatting or a way to pass variables.
Some examples :
Let’s say you want to list all of the services on your system. This is the simple Powershell command to do this.
--------
get-service
--------
Let’s say you want to list all of the services on your system, sort the list by the status of the service and return the results in a table format . This is the Powershell command to do this.
--------
get-service sort-object status format-table
--------
Passing variables
Let’s say you want to store the data of all the services in variable called "svs".
Variables always start with a $ letting the shell know that it is a variable. So, the commands will be as follows:
--------
$svs=get-process$svs
--------
The first line will store all the running processes in variable "svs". The second line will return all of the data that was stored in the variable "svs".