What's New in PowerShell Core 6.2

  • Article

The PowerShell Core 6.2 release focused on performance improvements, bug fixes, and smaller cmdlet and language enhancements that improve the quality. To see a full list of improvements, check out our detailed changelogs on GitHub.

Experimental Features

Previously, we enabled support for Experimental Features. In the 6.2 release, we have four experimental features to try out. Please provide feedback so we can make improvements and to decide whether the feature is worth promoting to mainstream status.

Use Get-ExperimentalFeature to get a list of available experimental features. You can enable or disable these features with Enable-ExperimentalFeature and Disable-ExperimentalFeature.

Command Not Found Suggestions

This feature uses fuzzy matching to find suggestions for commands or cmdlets you may have mistyped.

Enable-ExperimentalFeature -Name PSCommandNotFoundSuggestion

Example

In this example, the misspelled cmdlet name is fuzzy matched to several suggestions from most likely to least likely.

Get-Commnd

Get-Commnd : The term 'Get-Commnd' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file,
or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path
is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ Get-Commnd
+ ~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (Get-Commnd:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException


Suggestion [4,General]: The most similar commands are: Get-Command, Get-Content, Get-Job, Get-Module,
Get-Event, Get-Host, Get-Member, Get-Item, Set-Content.

Implicit Remoting Batching

When using implicit remoting in a pipeline, PowerShell treats each command in the pipeline independently. Objects are repeatedly serialized and de-serialized between the client and remote system over the execution of the pipeline.

With this feature, PowerShell analyzes the pipeline to determine if the command is safe to run and it exists on the target system. When true, PowerShell executes the entire pipeline remotely and only serializes and de-serializes the results back to the client.

Enable-ExperimentalFeature -Name PSImplicitRemotingBatching

A real-world test of Get-Process | Sort-Object over localhost decreases from 10-15 seconds to 20-30 milliseconds. The feature only needs to be enabled on the client. No changes are required on the server.

Temp Drive

Enable-ExperimentalFeature -Name PSTempDrive

If you're using PowerShell Core on different operating systems, you'll discover that the environment variable for finding the temporary directory is different on Windows, macOS, and Linux! With this feature, you get a PSDrive called Temp: that is automatically mapped to the temporary folder for the operating system you are using.

Example

PS> "Hello World!" > Temp:/hello.txt
PS> Get-Content Temp:/hello.txt
Hello World!

Be aware that native file commands (like ls on Linux) are not aware of PSDrives and won't see this Temp: drive.

Abbreviation Expansion

PowerShell cmdlets are expected to have descriptive nouns. This results in long names that are more difficult to type. This feature allows you to just type the uppercase characters of the cmdlet and use tab-completion to find a match.

Enable-ExperimentalFeature -Name PSUseAbbreviationExpansion

Example

PS> i-arsavsf

If you hit tab, and have the Azure PowerShell Az module installed, it will autocomplete to:

PS> Import-AzRecoveryServicesAsrVaultSettingsFile

Note

This feature is intended to be used interactively. Abbreviated forms of cmdlets can't be executed. This feature is not a replacement for aliases.

Breaking Changes

  • Fix -NoEnumerate behavior in Write-Output to be consistent with Windows PowerShell. (#9069)
  • Make Join-String -InputObject 1,2,3 result equal to 1,2,3 | Join-String result (#8611) (Thanks @sethvs!)
  • Add -Stable to Sort-Object and related tests (#7862) (Thanks @KirkMunro!)
  • Improve Start-Sleep cmdlet to accept fractional seconds (#8537) (Thanks @Prototyyppi!)
  • Change hashtable to use OrdinalIgnoreCase to be case-insensitive in all Cultures (#8566)
  • Fix LiteralPath in Import-Csv to bind to Get-ChildItem output (#8277) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • No longer skips a column without name if double quote delimiter is used in Import-Csv (#7899) (Thanks @Topping!)
  • Get-ExperimentalFeature no longer has -ListAvailable switch (#8318)
  • Debug parameter now sets $DebugPreference to Continue instead of Inquire (#8195) (Thanks @KirkMunro!)
  • Honor -OutputFormat if specified in non-interactive, redirected, encoded command used with pwsh (#8115)
  • Load assembly from module base path before trying to load from the GAC (#8073)
  • Remove tilde from Linux preview packages (#8244)
  • Move processing of -WorkingDirectory before processing of profiles (#8079)
  • Do not add PATHEXT environment variable on Unix (#7697) (Thanks @iSazonov!)

Known Issues

  • Remoting on Windows IOT ARM platforms has an issue loading modules. See (#8053)

General Updates and Fixes

  • Enable case-insensitive tab completion for files and folders on case-sensitive filesystem (#8128)
  • Make PSVersionInfo.PSVersion and PSVersionInfo.PSEdition public (#8054) (Thanks @KirkMunro!)
  • Add Type Inference for $_ / $PSItem in catch{ } blocks (#8020) (Thanks @vexx32!)
  • Fix static method invocation type inference (#8018) (Thanks @SeeminglyScience!)
  • Create inferred types for Select-Object, Group-Object, PSObject and Hashtable (#7231) (Thanks @powercode!)
  • Support calling method with ByRef-like type parameters (#7721)
  • Handle the case where the Windows PowerShell module path is already in the environment's PSModulePath (#7727)
  • Enable SecureString cmdlets for non-Windows by storing the plain text (#9199)
  • Improve error message on non-Windows when importing clixml with securestring (#7997)
  • Adding parameter ReplyTo to Send-MailMessage (#8727) (Thanks @replicaJunction!)
  • Add Obsolete message to Send-MailMessage (#9178)
  • Fix Restart-Computer to work on localhost when WinRM is not present (#9160)
  • Make Start-Job throw terminating error when PowerShell is being hosted (#9128)
  • Add C# style type accelerators and suffixes for ushort, uint, ulong, and short literals (#7813) (Thanks @vexx32!)
  • Added new suffixes for numeric literals - see about_Numeric_Literals (#7901) (Thanks @vexx32!)
  • Correctly Report impact level when SupportsShouldProcess is not set to 'true' (#8209) (Thanks @vexx32!)
  • Fix Request Charset Issues in Web Cmdlets (#8742) (Thanks @markekraus!)
  • Fix Expect 100-continue issue with Web Cmdlets (#8679) (Thanks @markekraus!)
  • Fix file blocking issue with web cmdlets (#7676) (Thanks @Claustn!)
  • Fix code page parsing issue in Invoke-RestMethod (#8694) (Thanks @markekraus!)
  • Refactor ConvertTo-Json to expose JsonObject.ConvertToJson as a public API (#8682)
  • Add configurable maximum depth in ConvertFrom-Json with -Depth (#8199) (Thanks @louistio!)
  • Add EscapeHandling parameter in ConvertTo-Json cmdlet (#7775) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • Add -CustomPipeName to pwsh and Enter-PSHostProcess (#8889)
  • Enable creating relative symbolic links on Windows with New-Item (#8783)
  • Allow Windows users in developer mode to create symlinks without elevation (#8534)
  • Enable Write-Information to accept $null (#8774)
  • Fix Get-Help for advanced functions with MAML help content (#8353)
  • Fix Get-Help PSTypeName issue with -Parameter when only one parameter is declared (#8754) (Thanks @pougetat!)
  • Token calculation fix for Get-Help executed on ScriptBlock for comment help. (#8238) (Thanks @hubuk!)
  • Change Get-Help cmdlet -Parameter parameter so it accepts string arrays (#8454) (Thanks @sethvs!)
  • Resolve PAGER if its path contains spaces (#8571) (Thanks @pougetat!)
  • Add prompt to the use of less in the function 'help' to instruct user how to quit (#7998)
  • Add support enum and char types in Format-Hex cmdlet (#8191) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • Remove ShouldProcess from Format-Hex (#8178)
  • Add new Offset and Count parameters to Format-Hex and refactor the cmdlet (#7877) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • Allow 'name' as an alias key for 'label' in ConvertTo-Html, allow the 'width' entry to be an integer (#8426) (Thanks @mklement0!)
  • Make scriptblock based calculated properties work again in ConvertTo-Html (#8427) (Thanks @mklement0!)
  • Add cmdlet Join-String for creating text from pipeline input (#7660) (Thanks @powercode!)
  • Fix Join-String cmdlet FormatString parameter logic (#8449) (Thanks @sethvs!)
  • Change Clear-Host back to using $RAWUI and clear to work over remoting (#8609)
  • Change Clear-Host to simply called [console]::clear and remove clear alias from Unix (#8603)
  • Fix LiteralPath in Import-Csv to bind to Get-ChildItem output (#8277) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • help function shouldn't use pager for AliasHelpInfo (#8552)
  • Add -UseMinimalHeader to Start-Transcript to minimize transcript header (#8402) (Thanks @lukexjeremy!)
  • Add Enable-ExperimentalFeature and Disable-ExperimentalFeature cmdlets (#8318)
  • Expose all cmdlets from PSDiagnostics if logman.exe is available (#8366)
  • Remove Persist parameter from New-PSDrive on non-Windows platform (#8291) (Thanks @lukexjeremy!)
  • Add support for cd + (#7206) (Thanks @bergmeister!)
  • Enable Set-Location -LiteralPath to work with folders named - and + (#8089)
  • Test-Path returns $false when given an empty or $null path value (#8080) (Thanks @vexx32!)
  • Allow dynamic parameter to be returned even if path does not match any provider (#7957)
  • Support Get-PSHostProcessInfo and Enter-PSHostProcess on Unix platforms (#8232)
  • Reduce allocations in Get-Content cmdlet (#8103) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • Enable Add-Content to share read access with other tools while writing content (#8091)
  • Get/Add-Content throws improved error when targeting a container (#7823) (Thanks @kvprasoon!)
  • Add -Name, -NoUserOverrides and -ListAvailable parameters to Get-Culture cmdlet (#7702) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • Add unified attribute for completion for Encoding parameter. (#7732) (Thanks @ThreeFive-O!)
  • Allow numeric Ids and name of registered code pages in Encoding parameters (#7636) (Thanks @iSazonov!)
  • Fix Rename-Item -Path with wildcard char (#7398) (Thanks @kwkam!)
  • When using Start-Transcript and file exists, empty file rather than deleting (#8131) (Thanks @paalbra!)
  • Make Add-Type open source files with FileAccess.Read and FileShare.Read explicitly (#7915) (Thanks @IISResetMe!)
  • Fix Enter-PSSession -ContainerId for the latest Windows (#7883)
  • Ensure NestedModules property gets populated by Test-ModuleManifest (#7859)
  • Add %F case to Get-Date -UFormat (#7630) (Thanks @britishben!)
  • Fix Set-Service -Status Stopped to stop services with dependencies (#5525) (Thanks @zhenggu!)