Namespaces

 

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Namespaces maintained by the Windows PowerShell

 

LONG DESCRIPTION

Namespaces in PowerShell support a system for uniquely identifying items in the data stores accessed through the PowerShell Providers. Namespaces, which are maintained as part of the PowerShell system state, ensure that each entity is assigned an unambiguous label that identifies that entity and no other.

 

PowerShell supports a number of different namespaces that correspond to the PowerShell Providers. For example, PowerShell maintains a namespace for the FileSystem provider. The FileSystem namespace, like the FileSystem provider, is associated with multiple PowerShell drives that correspond to the drives on your system. All items available through the FileSystem provider (the files and directories on your computer) are accessible through that namespace. For instance, the shell.dll file in the c:\windows\system32 directory is part of the FileSystem namespace, as shown in the following fully qualified path name:

 

 

Note that this is an example of a fully qualified path name. It is not an actual command. In fact, if you were to enter only the PowerShell Provider name and the two colons (filesystem::), PowerShell would crash.

 

The pathname identifies the PowerShell Provider (filesystem::), the PowerShell drive (c:), the container and subcontainer (\windows\system32), and the item (\shell.dll), all of which are part of the FileSystem namespace.

 

Because all PowerShell Providers are associated with one or more PowerShell drives, all namespaces contain one or more drives. In addition, all drive names are unique across all PowerShell Providers, and each drive is associated with only one provider. As a result, when you set the current working location in PowerShell, you're also setting the current namespace.

 

SEE ALSO

For information about path syntax, enter the following command at the PowerShell command prompt:

 

 

For information about PowerShell Providers, enter the following command:

 

 

For information about the current working location, enter the following command:

 

 

For information about system state, enter the following command: