PowerShell Profile
GOAL: Identify and create your PowerShell profile file,
define an alias for a command, and put that alias definition
in your profile so that it persists across PowerShell sessions.
If you're familiar with Unix, you are probably familiar with
the idea of a profile file - a script that executes every time
you open a terminal window or log in to the system. Windows
PowerShell implements this functionality, and you can locate
and edit your profile to automate environmental and setup
tasks.
See the path to your profile
To see where your profile file is located, just print out the
value of the $profile variable:
$profile
On my machine, this is the result:
C:\Users\{me}\Documents\Windows\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
You can see that this file doesn't actually exist (yet) with the
test-path command:
test-path $profile
The test-path command returns False if the file
doesn't exist.
Alias a command
You can set an alias for a PowerShell command. Let's try a trivial
example:
Set-Alias boing dir
Now, you can type boing and get a directory listing - but
only for the current PowerShell session. Handy, but cumbersome if
you want to use boing to get a directory listing in future
PowerShell sessions.
Put the alias command in your profile
If your profile file does not exist, you can create it this way:
New-Item -Path $profile -ItemType file -Force
Once the file has been created, editing it in Notepad is easy:
notepad $path
Add the Set-Alias command to your profile script:
Set-Alias boing dir
Save the profile file and exit Notepad.
Verify that your alias command executes automatically
Exit Powershell and start it up again - your boing alias
should give you a directory listing. Naturally, you can add
other PowerShell commands to your profile script at any time,
and they'll be executed every time you start PowerShell.
Summary
By working through these steps, you've learned a number of
things:
- PowerShell supports the use of a Unix-like profile file
that is invoked when you launch PowerShell
- You can alias PowerShell commands to define your own
shortcuts
- You can add commands to your PowerShell profile that will
be invoked every time you open PowerShell
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