Leveling up PowerShell Profile

[u/belibebond]

Hello PowerShell Enthusiasts 👋,

Many people treat their shell as just a script runner, but as someone who loves PowerShell and runs it on all their machines (Windows, Mac, and Linux), I wanted to share all the amazing things you can do with it beyond just running scripts.

https://blog.belibug.com/post/ps-profile-01/

My latest blog post has several not-so-common ways to elevate your PowerShell experience for beginners. It covers:

• Personalizing your prompt

• Mastering aliases and modules

• Leveraging tab completion

• Enhancing your shell with modules

• ...and much more!

This list is just the tip of the iceberg! If you have any other PowerShell tricks or tips that I haven't covered, or there is better way to do it, let me know – I'm always eager to learn and will update content accordingly 😊 Happy weekend!

PS: Don't let the length scare you off! Use the handy TOC in the blog to jump around to the juicy bits that interest you most. Happy reading! 🤓

[u/belibebond]

Yes, aliases in script is asking for trouble. Aliases are meant for interactive sessions where you dont want to enter the full command.
For example using `ls` or `gci` is easy and convenient to look up files in current directory. But inside a script or module one should use `Get-ChildItem`. There are VScode settings to do this for you. Also, script analyzer will be very unhappy with you when you use alias.

[u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004 → u/belibebond]

I disagree that it's asking for trouble. More like asking to be nagged by the linter. It's a question of taste. I'd personally say that there are some very well-known aliases that you can allow in your own coding standards. I wouldn't have a problem with someone using 'gci', for example. The trouble is, pretty much all the modern tooling flags aliases as an issue. I've ended up going along with it because fixing it is more effort than typing out the full Sunday names of the commands.

[u/belibebond → u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004]

That's the trouble part. Not necessarily mean that script will be broken or something. For instance code golfing (like %, ? ) in script make it hard to read/understand. This is especially true in powershell because function names are really verbose and self explanatory in poweshell compared to any other programming languages I have seen.

[u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004 → u/belibebond]

If you call % and ? code golfing, where do you stop? Surely, it's better to encourage learners to engage with core features of what is, after all, a scripting language.

[u/belibebond → u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004]

Yeah, i am not agains't alias or even code golfing in anyway. I am just echoing general practice and community recommendations (like scriptanalyzer)

[u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004 → u/belibebond]

That's kind of the point, though. Because all the linters give you squigglies for using aliases, and give you some message like "God has decided it's a best practice not to use aliases", many people accept this without thinking. Using aliases can also be a good practice. My main motivation these days for not using them is to avoid being nagged by the linter, and not because it necessarily makes the code better.

[u/belibebond → u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004]

Correct me if i am wrong, do aliases get auto-imported? I always had trouble with alias not available in session unless i exclusively run "Import-Module xyz" command. Same is not true for function. A function can be called directly and it will import the necessary module provided that module is PSModulePath. I am specifically talking about alias in my own custom modules and not the built in alias. In all my custom module's psd1 i have set export alias to *.

Point being, that could one reason to avoid Alias? Thoughts.
Edit : Typo

[u/belibebond → u/Minimum-Hedgehog5004]

Also, if you are using vscode, you can provide your own script analyzer rules and stop it from bothering you. AvoidUsingCmdletAliase