Getting aliases

In this recipe, we look at aliases in PowerShell.

How to do it...

Let's check out aliases in PowerShell.

1. Open PowerShell ISE. Go to Start | Accessories | Windows PowerShell | Windows PowerShell ISE.

2. Add the following script and run it:

   #list all aliases 
   Get-Alias
   
   #get members of Get-Alias
   Get-Alias | Get-Member
   
   #list cmdlet that is aliased as dir
   $alias:dir
   
   #list cmdlet that is aliased as ls
   $alias:ls
   
   #get all aliases of Get-ChildItem
   Get-Alias -Definition "Get-ChildItem"

How it works...

The Get-Alias cmdlet returns all PowerShell aliases. PowerShell's building blocks are cmdlets, and are named using the <Verb-Noun> convention. For example, to list contents of a directory, we use Get-ChildItem. There are, however, better-known ways to get this information such as dir if running the Windows Command Prompt, and ls if running in a Unix environment. Aliases allow most well-known commands to be run from within PowerShell. To list all aliases, use the following:

#list all...