Version differences

Differences between PowerShell 7 and Windows PowerShell 5.1

  • PowerShell 7 has new character codes for Escape and any Unicode character

  • PowerShell 7 has enhanced support for ANSI escape sequence handling in the console

  • PowerShell 7 has several new cmdlets that aren’t available in Windows PowerShell 5.1

    • ConvertFrom-Markdown, Show-Markdown
    • Get-Error
    • Get-Uptime
    • Remove-Alias
    • Remove-Service

  • PowerShell 7 is missing several cmdlets that are available in Windows PowerShell 5.1

    • WMI cmdlets (Use the CimCmdlets instead)
      • Get-WmiObject
      • Invoke-WmiMethod
      • Register-WmiEvent
      • Remove-WmiObject
      • Set-WmiInstance
    • The Workflow cmdlets
      • Invoke-AsWorkflow
      • New-PSWorkflowSession
      • New-PSWorkflowExecutionOption

  • The behavior of some cmdlets has changed in PowerShell 7

    For example, the Invoke-RestMethod cmdlet has 4 parameter sets and 58 parameters in PowerShell 7.

    PS> $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.ToString()
7.4.5
PS> (Get-Command Invoke-RestMethod).ParameterSets.Count
4
PS> (Get-Command Invoke-RestMethod).Parameters.Count
58

    The same command in Windows PowerShell has 1 parameter set and 34 parameters.

    PS> $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.ToString()
5.1.22621.1778
PS> (Get-Command Invoke-RestMethod).ParameterSets.Count
1
PS> (Get-Command Invoke-RestMethod).Parameters.Count
34

  • PowerShell 7 has new experimental features

    PS>  Get-ExperimentalFeature

Name                             Enabled Source   Description
----                             ------- ------   -----------
PSCommandNotFoundSuggestion         True PSEngine Recommend potential commands based on fuzzy search on a CommandNotFo…
PSCommandWithArgs                  False PSEngine Enable `-CommandWithArgs` parameter for pwsh
PSFeedbackProvider                  True PSEngine Replace the hard-coded suggestion framework with the extensible feed…
PSLoadAssemblyFromNativeCode       False PSEngine Expose an API to allow assembly loading from native code
PSModuleAutoLoadSkipOfflineFiles    True PSEngine Module discovery will skip over files that are marked by cloud provi…
PSSubsystemPluginModel              True PSEngine A plugin model for registering and un-registering PowerShell subsyst…

  • PowerShell 7 has new operators that aren’t available in Windows PowerShell 5.1

    # Chain operators

# Stop the notepad process if it's running
Get-Process notepad && Stop-Process -Name notepad

# Start notepad if it's not running
Get-Process notepad || notepad

# Ternary operator ? <if-true> : <if-false>
(Test-Path $PROFILE) ? "Path exists" : "Path not found"
(Test-Path $PROFILE.AllUsersAllHosts) ? "Path exists" : "Path not found"

# Null coalesing operator ?? <if-null>
# Return the right side value if the left side is null

PS> $startDate = $null
PS> $startDate ?? (Get-Date).ToShortDateString()
8/30/2023
PS> $startDate = '1/10/2020'
PS> $startDate ?? (Get-Date).ToShortDateString()
1/10/2020

  • PowerShell 7 has defaults to UTF-8 encoding for all output