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 53 parameters in PowerShell 7.

    PS> $PSVersionTable.PSVersion.ToString()
7.3.6
PS> (Get-Command Invoke-RestMethod).ParameterSets.Count
4
PS> (Get-Command Invoke-RestMethod).Parameters.Count
53

    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

  • 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