The Invoke-History cmdlet is a powerful tool in PowerShell that allows users to re-execute commands from their session history. This can be incredibly useful for system administrators and developers who need to quickly rerun previous commands without retyping them. Unlike traditional command-line interfaces, PowerShell provides a rich history feature that can be leveraged for efficiency and productivity.

In this article, we will explore how to use Invoke-History in PowerShell, its importance, and provide practical examples to illustrate its use. This feature is specific to PowerShell and does not have a direct equivalent in CMD. However, CMD users can use the doskey command to achieve similar functionality.

Examples:

1. Viewing Command History: Before invoking a command from history, you might want to see a list of previously executed commands. Use the Get-History cmdlet for this purpose.

   Get-History

   This will display a numbered list of commands executed in the current session.

2. Invoking a Command from History: To re-execute a command from the history, use the Invoke-History cmdlet followed by the ID of the command.

   Invoke-History -Id 3

   This will re-run the command with ID 3 from the history list.

3. Using Aliases: PowerShell provides aliases for many cmdlets, making it quicker to type. For Invoke-History, the alias is r.

   r 3

   This achieves the same result as the previous example but with less typing.

4. Re-running the Last Command: If you want to quickly re-run the last command executed, you can use:

   Invoke-History

   Or simply:

   r

5. Combining with Other Cmdlets: You can also pipe the output of Get-History to Invoke-History for more complex scenarios.

   Get-History | Where-Object { $_.CommandLine -like "*Get-Process*" } | Invoke-History

   This will re-execute all commands from history that contain Get-Process.