4 ms·

Let me guess... You don't like the path completion? The only credible complaint I've heard against PowerShell terminal is path completion. I call it credible,

Let me guess... You don't like the path completion? The only credible complaint I've heard against PowerShell terminal is path completion. I call it credible, because it's an actual behavioral difference with meaningful impact. Myself, I actually prefer the Windows path completion, where it fills the entire path and hitting tab again will cycle through the available options. Nothing drives me crazier than going into a directory generally knowing what I want, typing in a few letters, hit tab, get a subset of the path completed, think about what's there and where I want to go, figure out the next letter I need to type, hit tab again and hope for the best. When in reality there's only a few options that match my original text, and just hitting tab to cycle between them is pretty ergonomic. And shift-tab even cycles in the other direction, for those rare times when there actually is a huge list and you hit tab a little too quickly. But for those who prefer the other way for some reason, there are projects like PSReadLine: https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine EDIT: Found the previous discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11865516 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11865516

nightski 9y ago
To me Powershell is OK but if you go in expecting it to behave like bash you will be in for a lot of pain. The most annoying issue I have run into - try to delete a node_modules folder with powershell. It's painful.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  > To me Powershell is OK but if you go in expecting it to behave like bash you will be in for a lot of pain. Completely agree. PowerShell is an object pipeline, which means that its axioms are different than a text pipeline. If you come in trying to treat it like a text pipeline, you're not going to find the tools you expect. > The most annoying issue I have run into - try to delete a node_modules folder with powershell. It's painful. I was curious, so I just did the following in PowerShell v5: * Create a new, empty directory. * Retrieve NPM modules (`npm install browserify gulp`). * Ran `rm .\node_modules -Recurse`. * Directory is gone. What has your experience been?
Symbiote 9y ago
The Windows-style path completion is available with Zsh, I have this in my .zshrc: zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _match autoload -Uz compinit compinit There are many other options available with 'compinstall', but I set this up years ago and don't remember what I needed to choose. It's probably also available in Bash nowadays.
tdeck 9y ago
The PowerShell terminal is also incredibly aesthetically grating. They decided to take the old aliased bitmap font and fixed width window from cmd.exe and layer on a white/yellow/red on blue color scheme.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  You can change the screen buffer size, font, and colors of Windows terminals. Right-click on the title bar, select "Properties...".
  - tdeck 9y ago
    True, but terrible defaults are terrible defaults. And when I find myself using someone else's machine, rather than the comforting glow of a familiar terminal I'm thrust back into the harsh reality of Microsoft's poor design decisions :/.
    - jdmichal 9y ago
      Eh, in this case one person's "poor design decisions" is another's "my inbox becomes hate incarnate if this 10+ year old thing is ever changed". https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/ The best approach I've seen isn't to change defaults, but rather to make porting customization painless. And that's definitely something that can almost always be improved. I've actually been recently impressed by Samsung in this regard with their "Smart Switch" phone app. Super simple to transfer a lot of the stuff you care about from one phone to another, including sourcing from iOS and even Windows Mobile!
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    It sucks out of the box though, which is true of so many things in the Dev experience on Windows. It takes so long to tweak every little thing and download every missing utility.
- zvrba 9y ago
  > font and fixed width window from cmd.exe Both use console host. Before it was horrible, but they've improved it recently: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt427362(v=ws.11).aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt427362(v=ws.11...

nightski 9y ago

To me Powershell is OK but if you go in expecting it to behave like bash you will be in for a lot of pain. The most annoying issue I have run into - try to delete a node_modules folder with powershell. It's painful.

jdmichal 9y ago
> To me Powershell is OK but if you go in expecting it to behave like bash you will be in for a lot of pain. Completely agree. PowerShell is an object pipeline, which means that its axioms are different than a text pipeline. If you come in trying to treat it like a text pipeline, you're not going to find the tools you expect. > The most annoying issue I have run into - try to delete a node_modules folder with powershell. It's painful. I was curious, so I just did the following in PowerShell v5: * Create a new, empty directory. * Retrieve NPM modules (`npm install browserify gulp`). * Ran `rm .\node_modules -Recurse`. * Directory is gone. What has your experience been?

Symbiote 9y ago

The Windows-style path completion is available with Zsh, I have this in my .zshrc: zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _match autoload -Uz compinit compinit There are many other options available with 'compinstall', but I set this up years ago and don't remember what I needed to choose. It's probably also available in Bash nowadays.

tdeck 9y ago

The PowerShell terminal is also incredibly aesthetically grating. They decided to take the old aliased bitmap font and fixed width window from cmd.exe and layer on a white/yellow/red on blue color scheme.

jdmichal 9y ago
You can change the screen buffer size, font, and colors of Windows terminals. Right-click on the title bar, select "Properties...".
- tdeck 9y ago
  True, but terrible defaults are terrible defaults. And when I find myself using someone else's machine, rather than the comforting glow of a familiar terminal I'm thrust back into the harsh reality of Microsoft's poor design decisions :/.
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    Eh, in this case one person's "poor design decisions" is another's "my inbox becomes hate incarnate if this 10+ year old thing is ever changed". https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/ The best approach I've seen isn't to change defaults, but rather to make porting customization painless. And that's definitely something that can almost always be improved. I've actually been recently impressed by Samsung in this regard with their "Smart Switch" phone app. Super simple to transfer a lot of the stuff you care about from one phone to another, including sourcing from iOS and even Windows Mobile!
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  It sucks out of the box though, which is true of so many things in the Dev experience on Windows. It takes so long to tweak every little thing and download every missing utility.
zvrba 9y ago
> font and fixed width window from cmd.exe Both use console host. Before it was horrible, but they've improved it recently: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt427362(v=ws.11).aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt427362(v=ws.11...