Alias in PowerShell

Get-Alias

To get a list of existing aliases, you need to run

Get-Alias

CommandType Name Version Source ----------- ---- ------- ------ Alias % -> ForEach-Object Alias ? -> Where-Object Alias ac -> Add-Content Alias asnp -> Add-PSSnapin Alias badalias -> Wrong-Command Alias cat -> Get-Content Alias cd -> Set-Location Alias CFS -> ConvertFrom-String 3.1.0.0 Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility Alias chdir -> Set-Location Alias clc -> Clear-Content Alias clear -> Clear-Host …

There are a lot of standard aliases, here you can see the beginning of the list and one incorrect alias, which we will delete here

Deleting an alias

Starting from version 6 in PowerShell, you can delete aliases with the Remove-Alias command

You can read about how to install PowerShell 7 here

Remove-Alias badalias

In earlier versions, you need to use the Remove-Item command

Remove-Item Alias:badalias

The easiest way to check for alias deletion is to use Select-String

Get-Alias | Select-String -Pattern "badalias"

Creating an alias

You can create an alias with the Set-Alias command

Set-Alias -Name reboot -Value Restart-Computer

If the alias uses a path with spaces, they can be escaped using the character `

Set-Alias -Name app -Value C:\Program` Files\App\app.exe

Configuration

In order for aliases and functions to be saved after a reboot, they need to add to the PowerShell profile settings file

Its location can be found by the command

$profile

C:\Users\Andrei\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

If $profile shows a non-existent path, then the settings file can be created manually.

New-Item -Path $profile -Force -ItemType "file"

The file can then be opened and edited in notepad

notepad $profile

Set-Alias -Name reboot -Value Restart-Computer

PowerShell needs to be restarted.

An example of an alias that runs Python , that is used by TestComplete

Set-Alias -Name tcpython -Value "C:\Program Files (x86)\SmartBear\TestComplete 15\x64\Bin\Extensions\Python\Python310\python.exe"

Errors

Remove-Alias : The term 'Remove-Alias' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. At line:1 char:1 + Remove-Alias somealias + ~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (Remove-Alias:String) [], CommandNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

Remove-Alias has only been supported since the sixth version of PowerShell

Need to update PowerShell or use the Remove-Item command

Remove-Item Alias:somealias

My aliases

Set-Alias -Name firefox -Value C:\Program` Files\Mozilla` Firefox\firefox.exe Set-Alias -Name vi -Value C:\Program` Files\Vim\vim91\vim.exe Set-Alias -Name reboot -Value Restart-Computer Set-Alias -Name tcpython -Value "C:\Program Files (x86)\SmartBear\TestComplete 15\x64\Bin\Extensions\Python\Python310\python.exe"

Article author: Andrei Olegovich