Pretty Powershell 

What an awesome module! I'll have to make a video about this in the future. Love this addition. Github link for those that want to see the code: github.com/devblackops/Terminal-Icons

I miss this module every time I'm using macos and arch.

@@somdobomk use lsd , instead of ls

Omg, I didn't know about this module. Thanks!!! :D

@@barungh I had been using exa. Guess I overlooked the -icons flag.

The Linux terminal is way more intuitive when it comes to system management if you look into the server space vs what Windows is offering, this is where terminal is king these days, as even on Windows server, the default install is just a command line Window with no GUI, you have to actively specify you want that now. Now with the default Windows you have to type a long ass command with dsadd user specifying the domain, name etc to create a user. If you run Samba4 for Active Directory to get as close to it, you can add all of that if you please, but the command would be samba-tool add user (username) "Options if you want" Or you can hit enter after username if you are unsure of the parameters and do it interactively step by step. At least to me, once you have to think in CLI terms, the Linux way is more intuitive and logically oriented than the Microsoft way, and I am not surprised it has evolved to become this way, as CLI based servers and users are far bigger under Linux than Windows.

@@CMDRSweeper sudo ls -la -R / | grep "intuitive terminal" > null makes no sense to most people. System administration, networking are even more complex. Something that takes 6-12 months training is, by definition, not intuitive. Linux vs Windows administration and shells? I am not surprised a Linux system administrator of Linux servers would find a Linux Shell more useful. Windows administration, is more about managing software distribution on a large number and variety of desktops. Maybe, just maybe, it requires a different set of shell tools?

I came here to say the exact same thing. There is absolutely nothing intuitive about nix terminals and I've been a sysadmin for both. I honestly thought he was being sarcastic and was shocked when I realized he was serious.

@@logaandm Although I would be first to say that command doesn't make a lot of sense, but yes, rather than obscure strange switches with /X in various modes, I would say it is. I started out with Windows and hated the CLI, even though my origins are from dealing with DOS, Linux did take a bit of getting used to the various tools, but the piping lets you easily string tools to achieve results. But yes, there is a reason Windows servers have been in a decline and are now living in the SMB segment and desktop management only, anywhere else the Linux boxes have taken over.

My Computer programing experience was limited to some very simple command lines and a passable home user knowledge of MS Office VBA, mostly in MS Excel. I got interested in PowerShell partly from seeing what Chris was doing with it in his win10script. I found it very easy to pick up, possibly because I was familiar with the .Net Object Oriented Programing ideas in VBA. I found it a little bit convoluted, but not too bad, especially when I stopped using the shortened command versions initially, (those are what are usually referred to as Aliases in PowerShell. That’s a similar idea to what Chris is talking about, but only a single thing rather than lots of things shortened. The things Chris is talking about would normally be referred to as functions or custom commands (custom CmdLets) when learning PowerShell. There is a lot of useful stuff in this video, but he is also confusing the things himself a bit, IMO, Lol.)

@@alanelston2330 I don't disagree. My point really is that I still don't get why Chris thinks less of PS. I remember the time when I had to learn csh/bash.... it was (and still is) a horrible experience, full of inconsistencies and prayers that things would work. I will take PS with its advanced object model any day.

I am also not quite sure why Chris thinks Microsoft should be doing this for us. Perhaps I missed the point, but I thought this is effectively making some shortened command lines. Shorthand, abbreviations, and general customising to suit the individual. I don’t think Microsoft can be expected to read everybody’s minds and present them with customised PowerShell environment that suits them. MS have given us the ability to customise to suit the individual if he/she chooses to. That’s good of them isn’t it? Maybe Chris means they should make the default customisations to suit him, because he knows best. Well, maybe, - we will see how everything develops in the future, Lol. :-)

Couldn't agree with you more!

@@JonLondrezos I completely agree with you. The discoverability from posh is really good.

Who has time to type all those characters?

@@henryvaneyk3769 People with more than 2 fingers? People who heard of autocomplete?

He's got Powershell Newbitis. He is limited to thinking of a shell as an interface, so the bigger picture of powershell is difficult to process. But I get it. On the flip side, my nephew asked if he should learn powershell or python. He heard powershell was cool, but he didn't understand what you're supposed to do with it from the tutorials he watched. He doesn't work as an admin or anything, so I said python. He sees powershell as a programming language, so the bigger picture is again, difficult to process. The power of powershell is that you can make advanced tools without advanced programming. It's a shell but not an interface... and it's an abstraction of the .NET framework, not a script engine. So yes, it is frustrating when people post videos clearly missing the point... but it is what it is. :)

Possibly Chris was the one that had taken some Drugs and at the start was a bit over excited , and over emphasising with the entertainment presentation effect of his video. To some extent he is just perhaps getting good at handling RU-vid as you have to be successful in it, - sniffing something just before you start a video can possibly help. Smarter people can be annoyed I think when he often says wrong contradictory things, but for a layman like me, if you don’t take all he says too seriously, you can learn a lot from his videos, at least I do and can. I had to watch the video a few times before I caught the very last bit: Check out the video right at the end - he had calmed down a bit and said words to the effect that PowerShell was great once you are used to it and for a windows user it is worth the effort to learn. In a few weeks he probably will have forgotten what he said at the start when he was high on the drugs or alcohol, or whatever he takes to get started. I expect he will do a video soon entitled Powerful PowerShell.

This video is at the intermediate level perhaps. A professional scripter that knows PowerShell very well will be a bit annoyed by his mixed up, wrong, seemingly short sighted comments at the start. A newbie will probably get mixed up with, _ the Aliases Chris is talking about, (which could be described as "globaly available", personalised, or user defined functions), , and _ the shortened Command/ Cmdlet abbreviations that are referred to as Aliases. These latter abbreviation type Aliases you often learn about at the start of Tutorials on PowerShell. Often you are advised to avoid them initially when learning. Like any short-cut abbreviation thing in coding, it is often advisable to avoid them initially when learning. Best to get into bad habits later, Lol, once you know what you are doing. For someone in the middle, like me, who learnt some basic PowerShell recently, the video is OK. It seemed obvious to me that he was talking rubbish at the start, but the basic content of the video I found useful and interesting. He explains some things well and in detail, - just IMO.

@@alanelston2330 To be clear my comments aren't meant to diminish his contributions to the conversation of PowerShell. Heck he's technically correct 98% of what he says. He's inadvertently proven that PowerShell is so flexible and powerful that it can be utilized and molded to your whim regardless of your knowledge of PowerShell. I've always been interested in how this language manages to create a world where you could spend your whole life sailing on its vast surfaces being genuinely productive and having a blast and I could plumb the darkest mountains and valleys in its deepest depths with similar productivity and personal satisfaction. The fact that its the same language doing both is just amazing to me. Now the 2% that's just ignorance plain and simple and I can't fault someone for what they don't know. For instance as you pointed out "Talks about aliases" ... "shows poorly formatted functions" that seems like a silly thing to nitpick about but a lot of my career has been teaching my coworkers PowerShell. In some cases its getting our help desk techs to his level comfortable in the shell to do user account tasks quicker. In other cases its taking people from semi competent function writing to polished pester tested module creation. But in all those cases I spent more time dispelling misconceptions they had gotten from other sources than actually teaching them new stuff. One guy we actually walked through the exercise of writing our OWN Where-Object advanced function to show him the inner workings of a command he viewed as god tier complexity to visually drive home how utterly simplistic the inner working actually was. 236 lines in case your interested but ignoring the extensive param block to match the native Where-Object's parameter sets. 3, THREE lines of code the longest being 100 characters! That's it to create the same functionality as the native command. The point is spouting ignorance especially in an overly animated way that attracts equally ignorant people causes real harm to at least someones growth and development. And frankly there's hardly an excuse when he could have spent 5 minutes on the literal Microsoft page Using Aliases and realized what he thought are Aliases isn't what PowerShell defined Aliases as. I'd have a completely different take on this if he'd come on and said "hey for shell people like me it can be daunting to understand PowerShell and I'm sure lots of you are in that boat. So let me show you how I've learned to wrap these commands in my own functions to recreate the old linux commands we're used to. We'll also show how they can all be loaded automatically and finally if you stick around We'll wrap it up with how you can write your own simple function." Instead he made assumptions, never checked his assumptions, just like his code looks like it was copy pasted from someone else who barely understood it when they wrote it. Which brings me to my biggest pet peeve, if you don't understand something don't present yourself as an source of knowledge. I'm absolutely not saying don't speak on the things you know, or to not query about the things you don't. I've had one concrete rule for the teams if worked with over the years. It's perfectly fine to copy someone's work even from the internet but you had better be sure you fundamentally understand how it works before you even think about using that code in production! Bottom line, you're going to take the time to put out a video take the time to make it as accurate as possible and try to check your feelings and bias before you record.

@@TofuBug24 Nice reply, Thx (BTW you seem to be one of the lucky ones at RU-vid. I can’t post more than a few lines. A few people like me cannot easily post a lot. I have to split the comment up. So that was 1 of 10 I rest my case - I had to make several attempts at this post 1……

Heads up, it's mnemonics, not pneumonics. It has nothing to do with breathing, but rather with memory. English phonetics of Latin/Greek prefixes are a bitch

Yeh, There may be some reasoning to the different profile path place thing. (BTW I think he got it the wrong way around). - It is not just different versions. PS5 is part of the traditional stuff shipped with windows, and sometimes referred to as Windows PowerShell PS7 is a separate install from the built-in PowerShell. PS7 runs side by side with the built-in version. But PS7 is the new, cross-platform, open-source version. So it’s not quite just different versions of the same thing.

Yeh, they are not quite the same thing, ( and so there may be some reasoning to the different profile path place thing where they are, which I think he got the wrong way around) PS5 is part of the traditional stuff shipped with windows, and sometimes referred to as Windows PowerShell PS7 is a separate install from the built-in PowerShell. PS7 runs side by side with the built-in version. But PS7 is the new, cross-platform, open-source version. So it’s not quite just different versions of the same thing.

@@alanelston2330 Similar with me 7 in ~/ProgrammFiles/PowerShell 5 in ~/ProgrammFiles/WindowsPowerShell Chris got it wrong way round

The more notable flaw to his touch command is that it clobbers/erases an existing file's contents! This is definitely not what you would expect from touch. The fix for this is of course to supply the -Append and -NoNewLine options to his function. You could also use the -NoClobber option but this will emit an error if the file exists which is kind of ugly for day-to-day use. Hopefully Chris will see this and fix it ASAP. This is more in line with what one would expect for the default behavior of touch (no other options other than the file specified): function touch([string]$file) { "" | Out-File $file -Append -NoNewline $d = Get-Date $f = Get-Item $file $f.LastWriteTime = $d $f.LastAccessTime = $d }

I also thought that PS5 was the default shipped on both windows 10 and windows 11. I thought you might need to download PS7. I could be wrong or it might have changed. You can easily check what you have or are currently using by typing a variable command thing in the PowerShell window. If I try to give you that, the RU-vid Comment Police Bot deletes the comment. So I try it a bit differently. So it starts with a dollar sign, then these words all joined together without any spaces PS Version Table

@@alanelston2330 PS5 is stock with 10, 7 and the windows terminal is on 11...forget which build though. the big difference between PS versions that is likely the reason for different profile is that PS7 is built on .NET Core, a big difference vs 5 and hence there are a bunch of modules that aren't compatible in 7 that work in 5 and probably vice versa.

@@diabilliq Thx for the info, Bill I have a few win 7 and win 10 machines and just one win 11. What you say seems to tie up with what I have seen so far. All (including the win 11 machine) seem to have PS5 (Windows PowerShell) as shipped. To get PS7 I have to download it. PS7 generally seems to be referred to as PowerShell or pwsh and gets put at C ProgrammFiles PowerShell PS5 is to be found in C ProgrammFiles WindowsPowerShell (So it’s approximately the opposite of what Chris said in the video) By default, by opening powershell I get PS5 in a blue window. If I have PS7 installed, I can get PS7 by typing pwsh in that blue window, (and it stays blue). If I either double click on the pwsh exe file, or type pwsh from the command prompt run thing, then I get PS7 in a black window.

I have never tried the windows terminal that is new since windows 11. (I am just a computer Layman, but some computer professionals have commented to me that they think both PS5 (windows power shell) and the new terminal will fade out and the open source PS7 + will become the most common. But that is just their opinion. I can’t comment as I have just experience mostly with the simple command prompt, and PS5, a bit of PS7, and no windows terminal experience Chris seemed to like windows terminal a lot when he first stasrted using windows 11, but he changes his mind a lot, Lol)

@@diabilliq I was a bit surprised that you mentioned the Net stuff as a difference between PS5 and PS7, because: I thought I picked up from Tutorials that the Net and Object Orientated Program stuff was the big difference between _ power shell generally (PS5 PS7 and earlier PS versions) and _ the earlier simple black command, cmd, window stuff, (the simple command stuff which works like the very early non windows computers) I may have misunderstood what you meant

I did not like powershell before, bash is simple (until you get into very advanced things) and used to like that now i started learning powershell and im loving how consistent and how quickly i got a working script while i would have several bugs along the way in bash Havent even got to using C# or dll stuff which sounds amazing, wonder if you can do that on linux too with shared libraries

This. I have decided to switched to pwsh as my default shell on my linux machine, for at least a few weeks, and am loving it so far.

After a while only thing that kinda made me hate pwsh is how they cant follow their own pattern, like with WhatIf that is followed by some commands but not all While pwsh is really powerful im again using bash but i learned its features better like {var:?} which errors out if the var is not set or is empty which will prevent this nightmare 'rm -rf /${var}'

If by "more powerful" you mean "more convoluted and complex" then yes, I agree.

Yeah I have noticed with people who are new to IT that they will become autonomous with Powershell far quicker than with bash. With powershell once they understand the object oriented and get-command, get-help and get-member they are good to go. With bash it's harder

Absolutely agree with you.

100%. The Verb-Noun format may seem long winded at first, but it's immediately intuitive, and tab-completion is ubiquitous for every command and their possible parameters. So it's not only easy to understand, but object-oriented input-output make it extremely powerful and versatile. You can string together as many commands in a pipeline as you like and never have to worry about formatting the input or output as long as you look up the I/O type of the commands you're using. Or build your own commands and modules with their own independent functions, and have them work together like Lego.

True, Mr. Power Shell Ranger 😁

The main purpose of the “touch” command is not to create a new file but to update the time a file was last “touched”. So the name is perfectly logical. There must be a similar command in Powershell.

Same here. I also get a blank with Pwsh 7.

Chris was a bit over excited and mixed up at the start I think, and over emphasising with the entertainment presentation effect of his video. (Perhaps he had taken something and he was the one on drugs, Lol, :-) ) Right at the end he calmed down a bit and said words to the effect that PowerShell was great once you are used to it and for a windows user it is worth the effort to learn. In a few weeks he probably will have forgotten his criticisms and will do a video entitled powerful PowerShell. To some extent he is just perhaps getting good at handling RU-vid as you have to be successful in it. If you don’t take all he says too seriously, you can learn a lot from his videos, at least I do and can.

@Unfounded Yes, thank you, I found it

@Unfounded thanks for the info.

Yes, you need to add what you want to auto load when you start powershell. You get to configure and load your preferences vs learning someone else's.

Bamboozled 😁😅

@Unfounded Awesome! Thank you :)

If I am not mistaken ISE is not for PowerShell Core though (which is what is likely recommended for anyone getting started unless they need to tend to legacy stuff). For Core you should use the PowerShell extension in VSCode.

@@metamaverick Ahh, OK, good points, Thx. I have no experience with Visual Studio. Judging by the comments coming in the whole story of PS7 and or PS5 would appear to have been missed by Chris, as has most of what PowerShell is all about, Lol. Not criticising necessarily, his tangents sometimes reveal interesting things, but clearly this video is missing a lot of important points and issues

I do remember that when following some of Chris’s early PowerShell stuff, I discovered that some things the scripts were claiming to do, they couldn’t because the script code to do it was only available in PS7, not PS5. (Back then, he was using the built in shipped with windows PowerShell, so PS5, most of the time.) Half the time the code lines were not even in the script anyway, they got lost or never put in due to the endless chaos over at G Hub where he loses control of his scripts. A lot of stuff was missing or mixed up, and still is half the time, Lol. But still all interesting and entertaining stuff, IMO.

CLI is command line interface, and use VSCode instead.

and then its a whole row of errors when using the script

The answer to your question depends on what operation you expect the < to perform. If it is for comparison of two numbers then, just like bash, you should use -lt. For more info on comparisons, search powershell docs for about_Comparison_Operators.

@@metamaverick i meant when i ran the script

dig it, i'll commit that to the profile.

Worked on this a bit. Ended up with this code for Powershell Profile based on your Pseudocode - Thanks for putting the idea out there. Function Test-CommandExists { Param ($command) $oldPreference = $ErrorActionPreference $ErrorActionPreference = 'SilentlyContinue' try {if(Get-Command $command){RETURN $true}} Catch {Write-Host "$command does not exist"; RETURN $false} Finally {$ErrorActionPreference=$oldPreference} } # # Aliases # if (Test-CommandExists nvim) { $EDITOR='nvim' } elseif (Test-CommandExists pvim) { $EDITOR='pvim' } elseif (Test-CommandExists vim) { $EDITOR='vim' } elseif (Test-CommandExists vi) { $EDITOR='vi' } Set-Alias -Name vim -Value $EDITOR

That's my question too. I got stuck at the beginning and that's why I would like to reset it. Certain characters have also disappeared in the Terminal, they are replaced by squares.

If you have wsl2, just type bash on powershell. You’re welcome. 😊

@@DominicVictoria True though since I don’t use windows, your comment doesn’t apply to me.

set-location $HOME

together with PSReadline it makes for better discoverability/usability.

WSL is bulky and i'd rather have native performance. That and it has issues reading NTFS with any type of speed. For my usage WSL is just slow AF and I'd rather use pure Linux for my purposes.

@@ChrisTitusTech ahh okay. Understandable!

It's probably because get-WmiObjet is deprecated, use Get-CimInstance instead

@@bitocouillu Thanks for this..

Yeh, they are not quite the same things. PS5 is part of the traditional stuff shipped with windows, and sometimes referred to as Windows PowerShell PS7 is a separate install from the built-in PowerShell. PS7 runs side by side with the built-in version. But PS7 is the new, cross-platform, open-source version. So it’s not quite just different versions of the same thing.

I'm using FancyZones from PowerToys. So basically with a predefined layout, every time I launch an app, it will snap to its previous location. You can also overwrite the default Windows+arrow keys to make applications span across grids.

Next Monday!

I point my Documents folder up to OneDrive. As long as I point the same way your Documents\PowerShell or Documents\WindowsPowerShell folder is there and your $PROFILE comes with it. It's like magic when you move to a new PC!

Chris was a bit over excited and mixed up at the start of this video I think, perhaps he had taken something and he was the one on drugs, Lol, :-)

he knows about wsl so he probably knows about cygwin as well, sometimes you just have to use the powershell.

Chris, I able to install from iex on your GitHub page

I got the profile to install, couldn't run the One Click Install though, I downloaded it from github and unzipped and did a "run in powershell" on the setup,ps1 file.