Filling Gaps in the PowerShell Language

[StartAutomating]

There are fairly simple scenarios that pure PowerShell does not do. Most of these revolve around "completeness" for a given noun.

To give a couple of examples for a couple of data formats:

CLIXML

Clixml has Import/Export, but lacks ConvertTo/ConvertFrom and Out

• ConvertTo-Clixml should be an in-memory Export-Clixml #720
• ConvertFrom-Clixml should be an in-memory Import-Clixml #721
• Convert-Clixml should convert to or from clixml #722
• Out-Clixml should stream formatted objects back as Clixml #723

Command

• Search-Command should search loaded commands #1086
• Use-Command should safely splat a command #1087

JSON

JSON has ConvertFrom/ConvertTo, but not Import/Export and Out

• Export-JSON should ConvertTo-JSON and write to disk #724
• Import-JSON should ConvertFrom-JSON on disk #725
• Convert-JSON should Convert to or from JSON #726
• Out-JSON should output formatted objects as JSON #727

HTML

HTML can ConvertTo, but nothing else.

• ConvertFrom-HTML should turn HTML into PSObject #728
• Convert-HTML should manage HTML conversions #729
• Import-HTML should import content as HTML or XHTML #730
• Export-HTML should export content as HTML or XHTML #731
• Out-HTML should output formatted HTML or XHTML #732

Module

• Export-Module should export a module
• Invoke-Module should invoke commands from a module #1129
• Mount-Module should mount a module as a drive #1128
• Set-Module should change a module #1131
• Split-Module should split modules into smaller parts
• Use-Module should use a module's context #1130

ModuleMember

We can Export-ModuleMember (but not export classes), but we cannot Import-ModuleMember (having this would help modules bootstrap themselves move flexibly)

• Import-ModuleMember should import functions and aliases from objects #743

Object

• Find-Object should find properties or values within an object #884
• Invoke-Object should allow reflected invocation
• Out-Object should output objects (and be aliased to common output statement names) #885
• Search-Object should perform a recursive search within an object #883
• Set-Object should perform updates to an object

Some of these commands may be pulled from Pipeworks, though dust may need to be removed and docs will need to be updated.