Most of what you’ll need to know about this book is covered in chapter 1, but there are a few things that we should mention up front.

First of all, if you plan to follow along with our examples and complete the hands-on exercises, you’ll need a virtual machine or computer running Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012. We cover that in more detail in chapter 1. You can get by with Windows 7, but you’ll miss out on a few of the hands-on labs.

Second, be prepared to read this book from start to finish, covering each chapter in order. Again, this is something we’ll explain in more detail in chapter 1, but the idea is that each chapter introduces a few new things that you will need in subsequent chapters. You shouldn’t try to push through the whole book—stick with the one chapter per day approach. The human brain can only absorb so much information at once, and by taking on PowerShell in small chunks, you’ll learn it a lot faster and more thoroughly.

Third, this book contains a lot of code snippets. Most of them are quite short, so you should be able to type them easily. In fact, we recommend that you do type them, since doing so will help reinforce an essential PowerShell skill: accurate typing! Longer code snippets are given in listings and are available for download at http://Morelunches.com (just click on this book’s cover image and look for the “Downloads” section).

That said, there are a few conventions that you should be aware of. Code will always appear in a special font, just like this example:

That example also illustrates the line-continuation character used in this book. It indicates that those two lines should actually be typed as a single line in PowerShell. In other words, don’t hit Enter or Return after Win32_OperatingSystem—keep right on typing. PowerShell allows for very long lines, but the pages of this book can only hold so much.

Sometimes, you’ll also see code font within the text itself, such as when we write Get-Command. That lets you know that you’re looking at a command, parameter, or other element that you would type within the shell.

Fourth is a tricky topic that we’ll bring up again in several chapters: the backtick character (`). Here’s an example:

The character at the end of the first line isn’t a stray bit of ink—it’s a real character that you would type. On a U.S. keyboard, the backtick (or grave accent) is usually near the upper left, under the Escape key, on the same key as the tilde character (~). When you see the backtick in a code listing, type it exactly as is. Furthermore, when it appears at the end of a line—as in the preceding example—make sure that it’s the very last character on that line. If you allow any spaces or tabs to appear after it, the backtick won’t work correctly, and neither will the code example.

Note  Frankly, it’d be easier to just download the code samples and not worry about typing them in. They’re posted at http://MoreLunches.com—just click on this book’s cover image and head for the Downloads section.

You can also download the code from the publisher’s website at www.manning.com/LearnPowerShellToolmakinginaMonthofLunches.

Finally, we’ll occasionally direct you to Internet resources. Where those URLs are particularly long and difficult to type, we’ve replaced them with Manning-based shortened URLs that look like http://mng.bz/S085 (you’ll see that one in chapter 1).

Author Online

The purchase of Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches includes access to a private forum run by Manning Publications where you can make comments about the book, ask technical questions, and receive help from the authors and other users. To access and subscribe to the forum, point your browser to www.manning.com/LearnPowerShellToolmakinginaMonthofLunches and click the Author Online link. This page provides information on how to get on the forum once you are registered, what kind of help is available, and the rules of conduct in the forum.

Manning’s commitment to our readers is to provide a venue where a meaningful dialogue between individual readers and between readers and the authors can take place. It’s not a commitment to any specific amount of participation on the part of the authors, whose contribution to the book’s forum remains voluntary (and unpaid). We suggest you try asking the authors some challenging questions, lest their interest stray!

The Author Online forum and the archives of previous discussions will be accessible from the publisher’s website as long as the book is in print.