Monad The New Microsoft Command Shell

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MonadThe New Microsoft Command Shell

• Peter Provost
• peter.provost_at_microsoft.com
• http//www.peterprovost.org/

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Unix Shell Example

• List a file in a directory with details
• ls l hosts
• -rw-rr--  1 root root 41 Mar 18  2005 hosts
• Modify fields displayed
• ls go hosts
• -rw-rr--  1  41 Mar 18  2005 hosts
• Extract size and filename
• ls l hosts cut c 24-27,41-
• 41 hosts

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Unix Shell Example (continued)

• Show access time?
• ls lu
• Sort by size?
• ls lS
• Sort by modification time?
• ls -lt

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Monad Example

• List a file in a directory with details
• MSHgt ls hosts
• Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
• ---- ------------- ------ ----
• -a--- 8/29/2002 500 AM 734
  hosts
• Modify fields displayed
• MSHgt ls hosts format-table LastWriteTime,Name
• LastWriteTime Name
• ------------- ----
• 8/29/2002 50000 AM hosts
• Extract size and filename
• MSHgt ls l hosts format-table Length,Name
• Length Name
• ------ ----
• 734 hosts

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Monad Example (continued)

• Show access time?
• MSHgt ls hosts format-table Name,LastAccessTime
• Sort by size?
• MSHgt ls hosts sort-object Length
• Sort by modification time?
• MSHgt ls hosts sort-object LastWriteTime

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More Monad Examples!

• Show files modified in last 7 days
• MSHgt ls where-object _.LastWriteTime ge
• System.DateTimeNow.AddDays(-7)
• Show processes using 500 handles, sorted by Id
• MSHgt ps where-object _.HandleCount ge 500
  
• sort-object Id
• Show signer of each process binary
• MSHgt ps foreach-object
• p _.MainModule.FileName
• sig get-authenticodesignature p
• echo (p " sig.SignerCertificate.Issue
  r)

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Monad is a New Shell

• Similar to Unix shells, but
• Pipelines of .Net objects
• Object properties/methods directly accessible and
  discoverable
• COM, WMI, XML, etc. accessed with same semantics
• User-controlled formatting of objects
• Standardized command parameter processing
• Rich scripting language
• Providers extend the navigation namespace

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Commands

• Verb-Noun
• MSHgt verb-noun param1 value1
• param2 value2a,value2b param3value3
• You can alias
• MSHgt set-alias gps get-process
• ls and dir are aliases for get-childitem
• ps is alias for get-process
• Parameters can be positional
• MSHgt get-process processname lsass
• MSHgt get-process lsass
• Many parameters can be wildcarded
• MSHgt get-process c
• Partial parameter names allowed
• MSHgt get-process -p lsass

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Commands Emit Objects

• Traditional text parsing replaced with direct
  object manipulation
• A default text view of objects is dynamically
  computed
• Table for objects with lt 5 properties
• List for objects with 5 or more properties
• Get-Member tells you about the objects
• MSHgt get-process get-member

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Finding Information

• Finding Commands
• MSHgt get-command i
• MSHgt get-command verb process
• MSHgt get-command type Alias Function
• Filter Cmdlet ExternalScript
• Application Script All
• Man-page style help on language and commands
• MSHgt get-help
• MSHgt get-help ltcommandgt
• MSHgt ltcommandgt -?
• MSHgt get-help about_while
• MSHgt get-help where _.Synopsis -match
  "process"

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Object Manipulation

• Objects can be pipelined to other functions
• Related commands
• MSHgt get-process notep stop-process
• Object utilities
• MSHgt get-process where _.Handles ge 500
  group-object Company sort-object Count
• Your functions
• Direct object manipulation
• MSHgt np get-process notepad
• MSHgt np.Workingset / 1024
• MSHgt np.WaitForExit()

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Ubiquitous Parameters

• -Debug
• Programmer-level information
• -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue Stop Continue
  Inquire
• What to do if an error occurs?
• -ErrorVariable VariableName
• Assign errors to a variable
• -OutputVariable VariableName
• Output assigned to a variable
• -Verbose
• Additional information about the activities being
  performed

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Trusting Operations

• Commands with side-effects support
• -Whatif
• MSHgt get-process
• where-object _.Handles ge 500
• stop-process whatif
• -Confirm
• MSHgt stop-process pr s -confirm
• Can also use -Verbose
• MSHgt stop-process pr a-xqr-t -verbose

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Extending the Namespace

• Providers allow namespace navigation to go beyond
  the filesystem
• Monad includes a default set
• FileSystem, Registry, Certificate, Alias,
  Environment, Function, Variable
• You can write your own
• Navigation commands work
• MSHgt cd Registry\
• MSHgt dir YourProvider\foo

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Finding Data

• Data stores surfaced as drives in providers
• MSHgt get-drive
• MSHgt dir HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft
• Drive is a namespace with numerous pieces of
  information
• Item, ChildItem, Content, Property, ACL, etc.
• New navigation/interaction model supported with
  aliases for existing commands

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Namespace Functions

• Mounting new drives with names
• MSHgt new-drive -name SRC -provider FileSystem
  -root c\development\cab\main -description
  CAB source code
• MSHgt cd SRC\parser
• Great wildcarding
• MSHgt dir a-ftc
• MSHgt dir T?.msh
• Rich common semantics
• MSHgt dir \logs include .txt exclude A
  -recurse -force
• Drive specific extensions
• MSHgt dir cert -recurse codesigning
• Tab-Completion in all Drives
• MSHgt dir HKLM\SoltTABgt\MiltTABgt gt
  HLKM\Software\Microsoft

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Scripting

• A script is executed the same as if the commands
  were typed interactively
• Supports scripting .NET objects
• Loose, strong, and extensible typing models
• Uniform syntax for wide range of types
• WMI, XML, COM, ADSI, ADO
• Rich variable semantics (typed, read-only,
  constraints, descriptions)
• Rich operators and control structures (C-like
  with access to commands utilities)
• Functions (positional, named, typed, constrained
  params)

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Scripting .NET

• Creating .Net objects
• MSHgt dNew-Object System.DateTime 2005,4,20
• MSHgt DateTime"4-20-2005"
• Will try Parse() method, Constructor, Converter
• Inspecting properties and methods
• MSHgt DateTime"4-20-2005" get-member
• MSHgt DateTime get-member -static
• Accessing properties-methods
• Instance
• MSHgt d.DayOfWeek
• MSHgt d.AddMonths(6)
• Static
• MSHgt DateTimeNow
• MSHgt DateTimeIsLeapYear(2005)

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Typing

• Loose
• MSHgt d"4/20/2005
• MSHgt Function foo() args0
• Strong
• MSHgt datetimed4/20/2005
• MSHgt function foo(datetimedate) date
• MSHgt int char a
• Extensible
• Can extend types via MSHHOME\types.mshxml
• See .NET DateTime class DateTime property
• MSH works on any .NET type - not a fixed set of
  scripting types

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Typing Examples

• MSHgt char a
• MSHgt int char a
• MSHgt char (intchar"a" - 32)
• MSHgt w get-wmiobject win32_bios
• MSHgt w.Version
• MSHgt (dir)0.mshPath

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Text Processing Model

• .NET String class is the foundation
• Contains(), EndsWith(), Equals(), IndexOf(),
  Insert(), Join(), LastIndexOf(), Length,
  PadLeft(), PadRight(), Remove(), Replace(),
  Split(), StartsWith(), Substring(), ToLower(),
  ToUpper(), Trim(), TrimEnd(), TrimStart()
• Native support for useful datatypes
• Regular expressions, XML, arrays, hash tables
• Rich string operators
• , , -replace, -match, -like, -eq, -ne, gt, -ge,
  -lt, -le
• Implicit/explicit casting and coercion
• Rich utilities
• match-string, foreach, group, select, sort, where

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Leveraging .Net classes

• Script to rotate every image in a directory
• System.Reflection.Assembly
• LoadWithPartialName("System.Drawing")
  out-null
• foreach (f in resolve-path )
• trap OutOfMemoryException
• write-host "Error processing" f
  continue
• img System.Drawing.ImageFromFile(f)
• format img.RawFormat
• img.RotateFlip("Rotate90FlipNone")
• fi get-childitem f
• newname combine-path (fi.DirectoryName)
  ("rot." fi.Name)
• img.Save(newname,format)

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Uniform Data Access Syntax

• Provides a common user interface to objects of
  different typesystems
• XML
• MSHgt x xml"ltagtltbgtltcgtTESTlt/cgtlt/bgtlt/agt"
• MSHgt x.a.b.c
• MSHgt wc new-object System.Net.WebClient
• MSHgt rssdata xmlwc.DownloadString
• ("http//slashdot.org/index.rss"
  )
• MSHgt if (rssdata.rss.version eq "2.0")
  echo rssdata.rss.channel.title

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COM Automation (Internet Explorer)

• Bind to Internet Explorer COM object
• MSHgt ie new-object com
  InternetExplorer.Application
• Reflect against properties/methods
• MSHgt ie get-member
• Display properties
• MSHgt ie.Visible
• Invoke methods/set properties
• MSHgt ie.Navigate2("www.uiuc.edu")
• MSHgt ie.Visible true
• MSHgt ie.StatusText "Hello World"

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COM Automation (Word)

• Bind to Word COM Object
• MSHgt word new-object com Word.Application
• Use in pipelines
• MSHgt word.RecentFiles sort name
  format-table name,index,path auto
• Access document properties
• MSHgt doc word.Documents.Open("c\foo.doc")
• MSHgt doc.characters.count
• MSHgt doc.sentences.count

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COM Automation (WScript)

• Bind to WScript object
• MSHgt ws new-object -com Wscript.Shell
• Display popup
• MSHgt ws.popup("This is a popup",100,"Title",64)
• Last parameter is a button/icon bit mask
• 0 OK
• 1 OK and Cancel
• 2 Abort, Retry, and Ignore
• 3 Yes, No, and Cancel
• 4 Yes and No
• 5 Retry and Cancel
• Access other shell functionality
• MSHgt ws get-member
• CreateShortcut(), LogEvent(), etc.

16 Stop Mark 32 Question Mark 48 Exclamation
Mark 64 Information Marl
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Writing Cmdlets

• .Net class, inherits from Cmdlet
• Declare parameters as class members
• Override methods BeginProcessing(),
  ProcessRecord(), EndProcessing()
• Monad provides
• Parameter parsing/binding
• Ubiquitous parameters
• -Confirm/-Whatif (if you call ShouldProcess())
• Access to session state
• Invoke other cmdlets, providers, and host API

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Cmdlet Example (C)

• 1 Cmdlet("stop", "ps", SupportsShouldProcesstrue
  )
• 2 public class StopPs Cmdlet
• 3
• 4 Parameter(Mandatorytrue)
• 5 public string Name
• 6 protected override void ProcessRecord()
• 7 Process ps Process.GetProcessesByName(N
  ame)
• 8 foreach (Process p in ps)
• 9 if (ShouldProcess(p.ProcessName "ID "
  p.Id))
• 10
• 11 p.Kill()
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15

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Get Monad!

• Monad Shell Beta 2 available from Microsoft
  Download Center
• Search for Monad
• Supported on x86 and x64 platforms
• Documentation Pack also available
• Requires .Net 2.0 Beta 2 (also available from
  Download Center)

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Shameless Plug

• patterns practices is hiring
• See me after the talk or e-mailDarrel Snow
  dsnow_at_microsoft.com