4 ms·
PowerShell is fully backwards compatible with cmd. Try again.
by dfcowell 10y ago
PowerShell is fully backwards compatible with cmd. Try again.
- kabdib 10y agoNo, it's not. PowerShell has aliases like 'dir' and so forth, but it's definitely not compatible. This will break a bunch of legacy stuff. That stuff probably deserves to be broken; the cmd.exe syntax has always been pretty disgusting.
- ygra 10y agoIt's not compatible at the syntax level, but it will also not break anything either. Batch files written for CMD will still be executed by CMD, not PowerShell. Unless you have an application that prompts the user to open a command prompt and then send keystrokes there to run commands, nothing will be broken here.
- kabdib 10y ago"Compatible because we run the other program" isn't really compatibility, it's running the other program. Let's be clear: The syntax and idiosyncrasies and just plain stupidity of cmd.exe are very, very difficult to be compatible with. There's stuff in cmd.exe that beggars the words "awful and random". Deprecating the terrible thing that is cmd is a good move, it should have been done 20 years ago. As I understand it, cmd.exe largely stagnated for a couple of decades because a senior dev at Microsoft "owned" the code and took any attempt to improve as a personal affront. It couldn't be changed without bad political fallout. (Frankly I don't care how smart or politically powerful you are: If you're doing damage to customers, you should be told not to, and lose your job if you keep doing it). So Microsoft is finally getting it. I just wish that PowerShell wasn't their answer, because it's got significant problems of its own.
- tdsamardzhiev 10y agoYeah, to hell with legacy stuff. Legacy stuff is why we can't have nice things.
- Longhanks 10y agoAre they, though? None of the dir switches work in PowerShell..
- ska 10y agoNo, it is mostly backward compatible. Not the same thing at all.