There are a bunch of bits of syntax which I struggle to remember.

I’m not always online when I’m using my laptop, but I always have a Powershell window open.

This is a possibly not-best-practice way of using Powershell’s wonderful help system to store bits of reference material.

The problem

I’m moving a WordPress blog to Hugo, which uses Markdown, but I’m struggling to remember the Markdown syntax. It’s not difficult, but I’m getting old and I get confused with Twiki syntax.

In any case this ‘technique’ could be used for anything.

I could equally well just store the content in a big text file, and select-string it….but this is more fun 🙂

The content

In this instance I only need a few lines as an aide-memoire:

    ## The second largest heading (an <h2> tag)
    > Blockquotes
    *italic* or _italic_
    **bold** or __bold__
    * Item (no spaces before the *) or
    - Item (no spaces before the -)
    1. Item 1
      1. Furthermore, ...
    2. Item 2
    `monospace` (backticks)
    ```` begin/end code block
    [A link!](http://mattypenny.net).

create a module

The module path is given by:

$env:PSModulePath

Mine is:

C:\Users\matty\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\110\Tools\PowerShell\Modules\

Pick one of this folders to create your module in and do this:

mkdir C:\Users\matty\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\QuickReference

Then create a dummy Powershell module file in the folder

notepad C:\Users\matty\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\QuickReference\QuickReference.psm1

The content of the module file is throwaway:

function dummy {write-output "This is a dummy"}

create the help file(s)

Create a language-specific folder for the help files

mkdir C:\Users\matty\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\QuickReference\en-US\

Edit a file called about_.help.txt

notepad C:\Users\mpenny2\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\QuickReference\en-US\about_Markdown.help.txt

My content looked like this:

TOPIC
    about_Markdown

SHORT DESCRIPTION
    Syntax for Markdown 

LONG DESCRIPTION

    ## The second largest heading (an <h2> tag)
    > Blockquotes
    *italic* or _italic_
    **bold** or __bold__
    * Item (no spaces before the *) or
    - Item (no spaces before the -)
    1. Item 1
      1. Furthermore, ...
    2. Item 2
    `monospace` (backticks)
    ```` begin/end code block
    [A link!](http://mattypenny.net).

Use the help

I can now do this (I’ll import the module in my $profile):

PS C:\Windows> import-module QuickReference

Then I can access my Markdown help from within Powershelll

PS C:\Windows> help Markdown
TOPIC
    about_Markdown

SHORT DESCRIPTION
    Syntax for Markdown 

LONG DESCRIPTION

    ## The second largest heading (an <h2> tag)
    > Blockquotes
    *italic* or _italic_
    **bold** or __bold__
    * Item (no spaces before the *) or
    - Item (no spaces before the -)
    1. Item 1
      1. Furthermore, ...
    2. Item 2
    `monospace` (backticks)
    ```` begin/end code block
    [A link!](http://mattypenny.net).