The “Hey, Scripting Guys!” blog has been retired. There are many useful posts in this blog, so we keep the blog here for historical reference. However, some information might be very outdated and many of the links might not work anymore.

New PowerShell content is being posted to the PowerShell Community blog where members of the community can create posts by submitting content in the GitHub repository.

Scripting Blog [archived]

Formerly known as the "Hey, Scripting Guy!" blog

PowerTip: How to detect a valid Active Directory user name using regular expressions

October 14, 2016 Oct 14, 2016 10/14/16

Doctor Scripto

Summary: Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP, Thomas Rayner, shows how use regex to detect if a string is a valid Active Directory user name. (image) The invalid characters for an Active Directory user name are and . How do I tell if a string is a valid Active Directory user name? (image) You can treat this array of characters as a...

PowerTip: How to detect phone numbers using regular expressions

October 7, 2016 Oct 7, 2016 10/7/16

Doctor Scripto

Summary: Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP, Thomas Rayner, shows how to use regex to detect if a string is a phone number. (image) I have an array like , and I need to know which array items are phone numbers. How can I do this? (image) You can compare each item in the array with all its non-digit characters removed and see if that ...

PowerTip: How to escape characters in a string using regular expressions

September 30, 2016 Sep 30, 2016 09/30/16

Doctor Scripto

Summary: Cloud & Datacenter Management MVP, Thomas Rayner, shows how escape characters for use in regex. (image) Is there a way to escape characters in a string automatically for use in regex? (image) Use the method to automatically escape characters in a string so you can use them in regex. (image...

PowerTip: Use PowerShell to retrieve the date and time of the given time zone ID

September 16, 2016 Sep 16, 2016 09/16/16

Doctor Scripto

Summary: Use PowerShell to pull out specify TimeZone data from an object. (image) I have data retrieved from an external source that contains different time zone IDs like W. Europe Standard Time, AUS Eastern Standard Time, etc. How can I get the current date time value of it by using PowerShell? (image) In PowerShell, use [System.TimeZone] ...

PowerTip: Use PowerShell to list all possible colors in the console

August 19, 2016 Aug 19, 2016 08/19/16

Doctor Scripto

Summary: Use PowerShell and enumeration to access all possible colors that you can use in the console. (image) Is there a way to see all of the available colors that I can use when using Write-Host? (image) We sure can! Why, with just one line in PowerShell, you’re all done! Here is an example: (image...

Scripting Blog [archived]

PowerTip - Scripting Blog [archived]