| A very basic example of that, from my own use, is storing the result of a frequently issued large recursive directory search that always returns much the same list of files in a variable, and then using foreach to iterate over the variable multiple times to do stuff. Being a list of objects rather than an array of strings means that object properties and methods are still available within the loop bodies, the objects not having been flattened into just filenames. PowerShell occupies the same area on Windows that REXX did on OS/2, indeed the same area that Object REXX did. Its useful properties are not that it can be made to look somewhat like POSIX shell commands. In many ways asking "What are the advantages over a POSIX shell?" is not even asking the right question. Its useful properties are rather different. One such is that it can be used as an interpreted environment for rapidly prototyping .NET programs. I've used it to interactively do quick and dirty mixed file and SQL handling that would have required several full edit+compile+debug cycles in C# (and not just edit-and-continue). It can speak to anything that has a .NET API. This includes Windows Forms. https://github.com/jdebp/terminal-tests/blob/master/PowerShe... is a PowerShell program that uses ECMA-48 output to Windows Terminal to draw a wriggling worm, with a Windows Forms dialogue box alongside it that can control various test parameters as it goes. It's employable in the same sort of "glue" areas that REXX was. It is very useful in Azure/TFS build pipelines, for example. Don't think of it as a "server" thing because of this, though. It's a "glue" thing, as useful on desktop machines as on servers. It's the same improvement over writing glue as CMD scripts on Windows as REXX was over writing glue as CMD scripts on OS/2. I haven't explored its embeddability myself, but like TCL, REXX, and others it can be used as an embedded in-process scripting language within other programs. Again, this isn't something that one directly contrasts with a POSIX shell. |