{"id":39,"date":"2007-01-08T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-08T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testblog.sapien.com\/index.php\/2007\/01\/08\/taking-shortcuts-in-powershell\/"},"modified":"2007-01-08T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-08T15:00:00","slug":"taking-shortcuts-in-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/08\/taking-shortcuts-in-powershell\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Shortcuts in PowerShell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote a blog entry <\/a>about re-discovering DOSKey. I have to say it has been very useful and I feel much more efficient.  With only a few keystrokes I can kick off programs or complex command expressions. This was easy to do since I always have a CMD window open.  However, there are times when I’m in PowerShell and find myself reaching for a keyboard shortcut. While it is possible to access CMD from within Powershell, it takes too many steps. What I want is to use the same shortcut in PowerShell that I do in CMD. The solution is customizing my PowerShell profile with functions and aliases.<\/p>\n

Your default user PowerShell profile is in %My Documents%\\WindowsPowerShell\\Profile.ps1.  Let me show you what I did.<\/p>\n

In my DOSKey macro file I have a macro defined like this:<\/p>\n

op=”%programfiles%\\Opera\\opera.exe” <\/p>\n

In my PowerShell profile I created a new alias with the same name:<\/p>\n

Set-Alias op  $env:programfiles\\Opera\\opera.exe<\/p>\n

Notice I substituted $env:programfiles which returns the same path as %programfiles%.  With this alias I can launch Opera with the same keyboard shortcut as I do in CMD.  One thing to be careful of is spaces.  For example, my DOSKey macro of<\/p>\n

wd=”%programfiles%\\Microsoft Office\\Office11\\winword.exe”<\/p>\n

becomes<\/p>\n

Set-Alias wd  $env:programfiles”\\Microsoft Office\\Office11\\winword.exe”<\/p>\n

Notice I have to include quotes in the path.<\/p>\n

Some of my DOSKey macros are CMD expressions. Consider this macro:<\/p>\n

cm=%windir%\\system32\\compmgmt.msc \/computer=$1<\/p>\n

In PowerShell, I created a function to duplicate this functionality:<\/p>\n

function Get-ComputerManagement {
Param([string]$computer) mmc $env:windir\\system32\\compmgmt.msc \/computer=$computer
}<\/p>\n

Once this function is defined, I can define an alias for it:<\/p>\n

Set-Alias cm Get-ComputerManagement<\/p>\n

The only thing you have to remember is to define all your functions first in your profile then use Set-Alias to create your keyboard shortcuts. With a little work I was able to duplicate my DOSKey macros in PowerShell. In fact, I realized there were many PowerShell functions I use, such as a free space function, that I created even more aliases.  Anyway, now I have shortcuts at my fingertips regardless of what shell I’m using.<\/p>\n

Here are a few more aliases you can try out:
Set-Alias pse $env:programfiles”\\sapien\\primalscript enterprise\\primalscript.exe”
Set-Alias np  $env:WinDir\\notepad.exe
Set-Alias tb $env:programfiles”\\mozilla thunderbird\\thunderbird.exe”
Set-Alias wd  $env:programfiles”\\Microsoft Office\\Office11\\winword.exe”
Set-Alias xl  $env:programfiles”\\Microsoft Office\\Office11\\Excel.exe”
Set-Alias paint $env:Windir\\System32\\mspaint.exe
Set-Alias ie  $env:programfiles”\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe”
Set-Alias fp  $env:programfiles”\\Microsoft Office\\Office11\\Frontpg.exe”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month I wrote a blog entry about re-discovering DOSKey. I have to say it has been very useful and I feel much more efficient. With only a few keystrokes I can kick off programs or complex command expressions. This was easy to do since I always have a CMD window open. However, there are times when I’m in PowerShell and find myself reaching for a keyboard shortcut. While it is possible to access CMD from within Powershell, it takes too many steps. What I want is to use the same shortcut in PowerShell that I do in CMD. The solution is customizing my PowerShell profile with functions and aliases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-windows-powershell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}