commands detail - h

head

The PowerShell equivalent of the *nix head is:

gc file.txt | select-object -first 10

history

The Powershell equivalent of history is:

get-history

There is a built in alias history

It’s worth noting that history doesn’t persist across PowerShell sessions, although if you search online there are a couple of published techniques for making it persistent.

It’s also perhaps worth noting that Powershell gives you a couple of extra bits of information, if you want them:

get-history | gm -MemberType Property
   TypeName: Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.HistoryInfo
Name               MemberType Definition                                                                 
----               ---------- ----------                                                                 
CommandLine        Property   string CommandLine {get;}                                                  
EndExecutionTime   Property   datetime EndExecutionTime {get;}                                           
ExecutionStatus    Property   System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.PipelineState ExecutionStatus {get;}
Id                 Property   long Id {get;}                                                             
StartExecutionTime Property   datetime StartExecutionTime {get;}

history | egrep -i ls

There is no direct equivalent of the shell functionality you get with set -o vi sadly. You can up- and down- arrow by default, but if you want to search through your history then you need to do something like this

history | select commandline | where-object {$_.commandline -like '*ls*'} | fl

hostname

There is a windows hostname which does much the same thing as the Unix
hostname, but it’s not Powershell. It’s a standard-ish Windows executable that on my machine lives in c:\windows\system32

Details are here: Microsoft Windows XP - Hostname

You can get the server name through PowerShell like this:

get-wmiobject -class win32_operatingsystem | select __SERVER