EDUCBA

EDUCBA

MENUMENU
  • Blog
  • Free Courses
  • All Courses
  • All in One Bundle
  • Login
Home Data Science Data Science Tutorials PowerShell Tutorial PowerShell Versions

PowerShell Versions

Priya Pedamkar
Article byPriya Pedamkar

Updated March 24, 2023

PowerShell Versions

Introduction to PowerShell Versions

PowerShell provide a command-line powerful interface to perform various automation works. If you are aware of Linux and mac command line, PowerShell command-line is the same. PowerShell’s first release was in 2006 with its version 1.0. This version supports Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SPI, and Windows Vista. Every version comes with a few more supports and commands. So currently PowerShell version 6 is going on as stable version and 7 is about to come. PowerShell version 6 supports Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems. So in very simple terms, the biggest change in its version is support for another platform, which means support for operating systems other than Windows. In another version, there are additions of a few more commands and syntax.

Start Your Free Data Science Course

Hadoop, Data Science, Statistics & others

Different Versions of PowerShell

Below are the 9 Different versions of PowerShell:

1) PowerShell 1.0

PowerShell version 1.0 was the very basic version, and it supports Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SPI, and Windows Vista.

2) PowerShell 2.0

Till PowerShell 1 we were only capable to write commands for the local machine, that is, we were only able to control local machines, but in PowerShell 2 with the help of WS-management, we can write our commands for a remote machine (remote machine means accessing others computer from your computers).

New changes in PowerShell 2.0 are given below:

  • Background Jobs: Here, to invoke asynchronous any job it uses a Background job, and it waits for user input, for example, you are running any script and you want that script should ask the input value than only it should execute.
  • Introduction of Transactions: In this PowerShell provides the ability to write commands where a developer can roll back their changes.
  • Modules: This gives PowerShell the ability to self-managed, in very simple we can write a script and this script can be a command for another script, and define our own features to be used in other scripts.
  • Data Language: It allows localization, means we can write a script on one domain and when the same script will run on other domains then the local string will be imported at the runtime of script.
  • Debugging of Scripts: It allows us to set any breakpoint into the script for debugging.
  • Network File Transfer: With the introduction of Background Intelligent Transfer Service in PowerShell, it becomes able to asynchronous file transfer between two machines.

3) PowerShell 3.0

PowerShell 3.0 releases on 02 December 2011 and it supported Windows 7,8 including Windows Server 2012. The new improvements are given below:

  • Jobs Scheduling: We can set any time for jobs to be run, for example, if you have jobs A, B, C then it can be scheduled time for execution of all these jobs.
  • Session Connectivity: Control over remote sessions, When a script needs it can connect and disconnect to session.
  • Support for Delegation: It can delegate a user with less permission for Administrative tasks.
  • Detect Automatic Modules: It gives power to PowerShell scripts to load modules implicitly when it was needed by scripts.

New Commands and Features: There are many new commands also added in this version, like get-WmiObject, dwin32_logicaldisk, volumes, firewalls, It also includes network connectivity and also allows us to handle printers.

4) PowerShell 4.0

in this version, it starts supporting Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. PowerShell 4.0 introduced a few new features they are.

  • Save-Help: One of the important improvements in PowerShell 4.0 is it allow you to save Help for that module which is remote.
  • Improved Debugging: Debugging was already there, but i PowerShell 4.0 it comes with few more debugging features like workflow support, able to execute remote debug remote machine.
  • Switch Option in -PipelineVariable: To expose the current pipeline we use PipelineVariable.
  • Desired State Configuration: In simple terms, this version of PowerShell allows us to configure a system where it can recognize the machine.
  • Where and ForEach: Where and ForEach method syntax provides an alternate method of filtering and iterating over objects.

Example:

The example of foreach in the below screen, here we are displaying all numbers except number 5, this could be useful for filtering data.

foreach ($num in 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10) {
if ($num -eq 5) { continue } ; $num
}

Output:

filtering data

Example:

The Example of where is given below:

Get-ChildItem ./ranjan/ranjan1/ | where Length -gt 10

Output:

PowerShell Versions 1-2

5) PowerShell 5.0

The main features include in PowerShell 5.0 are OneGet command which supports Chocolatey’s.

Example:

It introduced two new commands called Get-TimeZone and Set-TimeZone.

Get-TimeZone

Output:

TimeZone

6) PowerShell 6.0

This release was one of the measured releases, as in this release is made PowerShell as cross-platform. Cross-platform means are independent of any operating system(support, for example, macOS, Linux, and Windows). It becomes free and completely open-source. This release was achieved on 10th January 2018 and it is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

7) PowerShell Core 6.1

Some of the important features added in 6.1 are given below:

  • Ability to support 1900 commands to Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019.
  • It builds on .NET core 2.1.
  • support all new versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux.
  • There was also an improvement in performance.

8) PowerShell Core 6.2

In this release mostly bug fixing and some performance enhancements work has been done.

Example:

In this example, I am using PowerShell 6.2 and checking my Operating system details.

Get-Host | Select-Object Version
$PSVersionTable

Output:

Get-Host

The above example shows how I am able to run PowerShell on Linux with PowerShell version 6.2. If i will go with any older version than it would not work.

9) PowerShell 7

New features in PowerShell 7 include:

  • It is based on the .NET Core 3.1.
  • ForEach-Object -Parallel.
  • Windows compatibility wrapper.
  • Notification for new versions.
  • Get-Error cmdlet to handle errors powerShell.
  • Options for Pipeline chain operators which is && and ||.
  • It includes ternary operators like (x ? y: z), so if you are using PowerShell version 7 then the only a ternary operator will work.
  • Out-GridView, -ShowWindow are some new commands.
Note: The ternary operation will not work if you are using lower than 7 versions. See the example below:

PowerShell Versions 1-5

Conclusion

From version 1 to 7 every version comes with some new commands and features, but they did big architectural changes by supporting operating systems other than Windows like macOS and Linux.

Recommended Articles

This is a guide to PowerShell Versions. Here we discuss the basic concept and top 9 different PowerShell versions along with the examples. You may also look at the following articles to learn more –

  1. NFS in Linux
  2. PowerShell Environment Variables
  3. Regex in PowerShell
  4. PowerShell Rename-Item
All in One Excel VBA Bundle
500+ Hours of HD Videos
15 Learning Paths
120+ Courses
Verifiable Certificate of Completion
Lifetime Access
Financial Analyst Masters Training Program
2000+ Hours of HD Videos
43 Learning Paths
550+ Courses
Verifiable Certificate of Completion
Lifetime Access
All in One Data Science Bundle
2000+ Hour of HD Videos
80 Learning Paths
400+ Courses
Verifiable Certificate of Completion
Lifetime Access
All in One Software Development Bundle
5000+ Hours of HD Videos
149 Learning Paths
1050+ Courses
Verifiable Certificate of Completion
Lifetime Access
Primary Sidebar
All in One Data Science Bundle2000+ Hour of HD Videos | 80 Learning Paths | 400+ Courses | Verifiable Certificate of Completion | Lifetime Access
Financial Analyst Masters Training Program2000+ Hours of HD Videos | 43 Learning Paths | 550+ Courses | Verifiable Certificate of Completion | Lifetime Access
Footer
About Us
  • Blog
  • Who is EDUCBA?
  • Sign Up
  • Live Classes
  • Certificate from Top Institutions
  • Contact Us
  • Verifiable Certificate
  • Reviews
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  •  
Apps
  • iPhone & iPad
  • Android
Resources
  • Free Courses
  • Database Management
  • Machine Learning
  • All Tutorials
Certification Courses
  • All Courses
  • Data Science Course - All in One Bundle
  • Machine Learning Course
  • Hadoop Certification Training
  • Cloud Computing Training Course
  • R Programming Course
  • AWS Training Course
  • SAS Training Course

ISO 10004:2018 & ISO 9001:2015 Certified

© 2023 - EDUCBA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THE CERTIFICATION NAMES ARE THE TRADEMARKS OF THEIR RESPECTIVE OWNERS.

Let’s Get Started

By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

EDUCBA

*Please provide your correct email id. Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you

EDUCBA
Free Data Science Course

Hadoop, Data Science, Statistics & others

By continuing above step, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
*Please provide your correct email id. Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you

EDUCBA

*Please provide your correct email id. Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you
EDUCBA

*Please provide your correct email id. Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you
EDUCBA Login

Forgot Password?

By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the cookie policy. By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to our Privacy Policy

Loading . . .
Quiz
Question:

Answer:

Quiz Result
Total QuestionsCorrect AnswersWrong AnswersPercentage

Explore 1000+ varieties of Mock tests View more