Pro Windows PowerShell

6.3. Built-in Aliases

As I already mentioned, PowerShell comes with a host of aliases right out of the box. Doing a quick check gets us a staggering number:

PS> (Get-Alias).Length
101

101 built-in aliases! Now that is what I call a lot. We can split those into three logical groups:

• CMD.EXE compatibility aliases: A group of aliases aimed at providing similar, if not the same, commands experienced CMD.EXE users know

• UNIX shell compatibility aliases: Aliases trying to emulate commands present in UNIX shells like bash

• Convenience aliases: Shortcuts for most commonly used commands that can make your life easier

6.3.1. cmd.exe Look-alikes

You have seen already the liberal use of dir, cd, copy, and so on in our examples so far. Those were not the real ...