I watched an interview with Jeff Snover once and he said that they tried to make a unixy bash-like shell a few times and decided it was never going to fit in Windows. So they went a different way and took a lot of inspiration from OpenVMS.

So don’t expect PowerShell to be like a UNIX shell. It isn’t, and wasn’t meant to be one. It’s different, on purpose :)

What dont you like about powershell?

I'm a die hard linux user, and some years ago took a windows gig on a whim. I find powershell fantastic and the only thing that makes my role bearable. Now, one of the first things i install on Linux is powershell.

The awk equivalents in power-shell are horrific.

You don't find awk itself horrific in its own way?

Powershell is amazing. Just don't expect it to be posix. Using objects and structured data is leagues better than string parsing in posix shells imo.