Why best practices improve reliability in PowerShell - Test Your Understanding

Practice - 5 Tasks

1fill in blank

easy

Complete the code to display a message about script reliability.

PowerShell

Write-Output [1]

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

AWrite-Output "Scripts are unreliable."

B"Scripts that follow best practices are more reliable."

CScripts that follow best practices are more reliable.

Decho Scripts are unreliable

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Forgetting to put the message inside quotes causes errors.

Using echo without quotes outputs unexpected results.

The Write-Output command requires a string in quotes to display the message correctly.

2fill in blank

medium

Complete the code to check if a file exists before reading it.

PowerShell

if (Test-Path [1]) { Get-Content [1] } else { Write-Output "File not found." }

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A"C:\data.txt"

B'data.txt'

Cdata.txt

DC:\data.txt

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Not quoting the file path causes errors.

Using single quotes with backslashes can cause escape issues.

File paths must be strings in quotes in PowerShell to be recognized correctly.

3fill in blank

hard

Fix the error in the script that tries to create a directory if it doesn't exist.

PowerShell

if (-Not (Test-Path [1])) { New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path [1] }

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A'C:\Logs'

BC:\Logs

C"C:\Logs"

DLogs

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Using unquoted paths causes command failures.

Using single quotes with backslashes can cause unexpected behavior.

The path must be a string in quotes for Test-Path and New-Item to work correctly.

4fill in blank

hard

Fill both blanks to create a function that logs messages with timestamps.

PowerShell

function Log-Message {
    param([string]$message)
    $timestamp = Get-Date -Format [1]
    Write-Output "$timestamp - [2]"
}

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A"yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"

B$message

Cmessage

D"MM/dd/yyyy"

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Not quoting the date format string causes errors.

Using 'message' without $ does not insert the variable value.

The date format string must be quoted, and the variable $message is used inside the output string.

5fill in blank

hard

Fill all three blanks to filter services that are running and display their names.

PowerShell

$services = Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Status -eq [1] }
$names = $services | Select-Object -ExpandProperty [2]
$names | ForEach-Object { Write-Output [3] }

Drag options to blanks, or click blank then click option'

A"Running"

BName

C$_

DStatus

Attempts:

3 left

💡 Hint

Common Mistakes

Not quoting 'Running' causes filter failure.

Selecting wrong property or not expanding it causes errors.

Using wrong variable in ForEach-Object outputs nothing.

We filter services with Status 'Running', select the 'Name' property, and output each name using $_.