[Raesan]

PowerShell has "providers" that let you interact with things as if they were a file system, which is what is going on in your example. I agree that it's not a great way to expose IIS settings.

The other place you see providers in use is when you use PS to edit the registry, but it's HKLM:\ (or whatever other hive) instead of IIS:\, and it makes a lot more sense there since people naturally think of the registry in a filesystem sort of way.

More info if you're curious about providers:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/%5Clibrary/Ee126186(v=VS...