Microsoft has unveiled Release Candidate 1 of its Monad command line interface, marking the final stage of the software before release.

The tool is slated for the fourth quarter of this year and will be called PowerShell, the company revealed at the Microsoft Management Summit in San Diego.

PowerShell will offer a command line similar to Unix systems, allowing users to perform tasks through commands instead of a graphical user interface that is typical for Windows.

"It has been difficult to automate repetitive tasks due to the lacklustre utilities and scripting languages, not to mention the lack of a common syntax and naming conventions," Microsoft technical product manager Ward Ralston noted on a company blog. 

The technology offers over 130 standard utilities to perform common administration tasks. Users and third-party software applications can use the tool to administer their software.

Microsoft demonstrated at LinuxWorld last August that PowerShell can also be used to translate common Unix commands into their Windows equivalents.

Because Unix users are not always familiar with Windows commands, PowerShell could allow for an easier migration between the competing operating systems.

PowerShell was originally scheduled to ship as part of Windows Vista but will now be used for the forthcoming releases of Exchange and Microsoft Operations Manager.

The tool gained instant notoriety last summer after security vendor F-Secure reported the first proof-of-concept virus for the application and mistakenly labelled it as the world's first virus for Windows Vista.

PowerShell RC1 is available as a free download from Microsoft's Download Center.