What tools and languages are available for windows shell scripting?

Question

I want to know what are the options to do some scripting jobs in windows platform. I need functionality like file manipulations, registry editing etc. Can files be edited using

Answer 1

It might be worth looking at the prerelease of version 2.0. A lot of stuff has changed:

http://blogs.msdn.com/powershell/archive/2007/11/06/what-s-new-in-ctp-of-powershell-2-0.aspx