PowerShell 5 vs 7#

With Windows 11 you still only get PowerShell v5.1 as default. To take advantage of the latest features; install the v7.x version.
Simply having the proper operators for or and and is a good enough reason (&& and || rather than -and and -or). Version 7 just feels more like home for a developer.

Check what version you are running with the following command:

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

Note that Powershell 5.x uses the powershell.exe executable, while the 7.x version uses pwsh.exe.

Read more about the differences here: Differences between Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7.x

PowerShell 7.x installation#

Install and update it through winget:

winget install Microsoft.PowerShell

Pwsh profile#

You can change the default pwsh profile by editing it with your favorite editor (e.g. vscode).
Run the following command in the terminal:

code $PROFILE.CurrentUserAllHosts

Below we’ll explore a few examples of what I’ve added to my default profile.

Set-Alias to the rescue#

With the PowerShell Set-Alias command, you can configure your own shortcuts for commands. You might already have some commands (such as grep) in muscle memory. Pointing grep to Select-String is a simple solution to take advantage of this.

Here are some examples of what I’ve added to my pwsh profile:

# make the grep alias run select-string
Set-Alias grep sls
# make touch run new-item
Set-Alias touch ni
# make nc run test-connection
Set-Alias nc Test-Connection
# make codei run vscode insiders version
Set-Alias codei "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\AppData\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code Insiders\Code - Insiders.exe"

Adding some convenience functions to the profile#

Some PowerShell commands are just inconvenient to use, and can be improved by wrapping them in a function.
For example Stop-Process, executed something like this: Stop-Process -Name notepad -Force. If we wrap it in a function we can shorten this to kill notepad.

# set up alias for new function
Set-Alias kill KillProcess
Set-Alias killps KillProcess

# make it quicker to type
function KillProcess {
    param($processName)
    Stop-Process -Name $processName -Force
}

Sometimes commands can also be hard to remember. For instance, I always forget how to list the installed .NET SDKs: dotnet --list-sdks.
By wrapping this in a function I can make it easier to remember:

# add an alias every time I get it wrong
Set-Alias dotnetversion dotnetversions
Set-Alias dotnetsdks dotnetversions

# wrap it in a function to make it easier to type and remember
function dotnetversions {
    dotnet --list-sdks
}

Other things I typically forget is how to print environment variables and printing the content of the path.
Again, wrapping these in new functions and adding aliases to the rescue:

# print environment variables
function Print-Envs {
    dir env:
}

# adding a new entry every time I get it wrong:
Set-Alias listenvs Print-Envs
Set-Alias printenvs Print-Envs
Set-Alias envs Print-Envs
Set-Alias echoenvs Print-Envs
Set-Alias echo-envs Print-Envs

# print path content
function Print-Path {
    $env:path
}

# adding a new entry every time I get it wrong
Set-Alias echopath Print-Path
Set-Alias echo-path Print-Path
Set-Alias path Print-Path
Set-Alias printpath Print-Path
Set-Alias listpath Print-Path

Faster switching between directories#

There are some directories I use more than others. By adding a goto function to switch between these, I can get short commands into my muscle memory to quickly navigate to where I want to be. Some simple examples below. The longer the path is to the directory I want to go, the more convenient it is to have a “goto short key” for it (e.g. goto tmp)

# usage example: goto tmp
function goto {
    param($directory)
    if ($directory -eq "tmp") {
        Set-Location "D:\tmp"
    } elseif ($directory -eq "git") {
        Set-Location "C:\git"
    } else {
        Set-Location $directory
    }
}

Simple watch command#

Certain Linux command-line tools are simply indispensable. For me, one such tool is watch. To address the absence of watch in Windows, I added a simple implementation of it to my PowerShell profile.

# usage example - run a single ping every 2 seconds: watch ping -n 1 cognitiveoverload.blog 2
function watch {
    param (
        [Parameter(ValueFromRemainingArguments = $true)]
        [string[]]$Args
    )

    if ($Args.Count -eq 0) {
        Write-Host "Usage: watch <command> [args ...] <interval>"
        return
    }

    $lastArg = $Args[-1]
    if ($lastArg -as [int]) {
        $Interval = [int]$lastArg
        $Command = $Args[0..($Args.Count - 2)] -join ' '
    } else {
        $Interval = 2
        $Command = $Args -join ' '
    }

    $iteration = 0
    while ($true) {
        $iteration++
        $dots = "." * $iteration
        $output = Invoke-Expression $Command
        if ($output) {
            $iteration = 0
            Clear-Host
            Write-Host "Current Date and Time: $(Get-Date -Format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')" -ForegroundColor DarkCyan
            Write-Output $output
        } else {
            Clear-Host
            Write-Host "Current Date and Time: $(Get-Date -Format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')" -ForegroundColor DarkCyan
            Write-Output "No output from command$dots"
        }
        Start-Sleep -Seconds $Interval
    }
}

Now that we’ve configured our PowerShell profile with some helpful functions, we need to make sure we can take advantage of this in our dev environment as well. We need update our IDE to use pwsh.exe, so it loads the profile. See below how to do that in Visual Studio and VS Code.

Setting pwsh as the default shell in Visual Studio#

To set it as the default terminal shell in Visual Studio, go to Options => Terminal => Choose PowerShell 7 and click “Set as Default”:

Setting pwsh as the default shell in Visual Studio Code#

To set it as the default terminal shell in Visual Studio Code, use the command palette and start typing “terminal: select default profile”:

On the next popup; select “pwsh.exe”:

If you are using PowerShell to your advantage in any other way, I’d love to hear about it!

Find my contact info here