Create a Powershell cheatsheet
Aliases
In Powershell, you can set an alias (custom command) for a session by typing it directly:
function thanksbeef { echo "You're welcome, beefsack." }
Set-Alias -Name thankyou -Value thanksbeef
This is a simple function: type thankyou and the shell responds with You're welcome, beefsack. This behaviour will stop as soon as you exit or restart Powershell.
Create a file with permanent aliases
You can create a text file and keep all your Powershell aliases in there, and they'll be available in every Powershell session.
Find your profile location with the command:
echo $profile
The result will be something like:
my_username\My Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
Create a new text file and save it at that path with that filename.
Put your aliases in this file, and restart Powershell.
A useful thing to do is bung a list of your most frequently-used commands into an alias called something like 'cheatsheet'. You can then type 'cheatsheet' into Powershell whenever you want a reminder!
function mycheats {
Write-Host "Some text"
Write-Host "Some more text"
Write-Host "A third line of text"
}
Set-Alias -Name cheatsheet -Value mycheats
Notes:
- The Write-Host command can output coloured text.
- We use
Write-Hostrather thanecho(an alias ofWrite-Output) because the latter is meant for piping the output to subsequent commands. I don't think anything bad could happen if you did useechothough. - You can add line breaks with
Write-Host "".