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The author must familiarize himself with PowerShell. Aside from the terrible, terrible idea of using verbs as prefixes, Power Shell is a great combination betw

The author must familiarize himself with PowerShell. Aside from the terrible, terrible idea of using verbs as prefixes, Power Shell is a great combination between a programming language and a shell.

zwischenzug 4y ago
I remember joking that PowerShell is a properly architected shell, which is why it was so uninspiring to use. I still use Bourne-derived shells because they're just so damn human.
- btschaegg 4y ago
  Well it might work as a joke, but I have to say that I had more than enough experiences with Powershell that drastically disprove that notion in my opinion. That is not to say that bash and consorts are much better, but e.g. a shell that decides to arbitrarily violate its normal error handling logic based on internal voodoo heuristics about if it's running in a console or not [1] is pretty much the total antithesis of sanely architected in my book. As in: Architecture must be the reason someone thought this insane scheme has any merit. And arbitrarily starting to throw exceptions whenever a subprocess dares to write to stderr, especially if the shell doesn't do this in normal operation, doesn't get any other label than "insane" from me. [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57272097 https://stackoverflow.com/a/57272097
  - zwischenzug 4y ago
    Fair enough, I only used PS for a day or two.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Also the terrible terrible idea of using common unix shell command names as aliases for PowerShell commands that are similar but don't quite work the same way and take entirely different parameters. ...and that time period where Invoke-WebRequest used IE for parsing by default. But other than those flaws I agree that it is really great.
- delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
  > using common unix shell command names as aliases for PowerShell commands that are similar but don't quite work the same way On any Linux/Unix, when `ls` is called, PS runs the native `ls` and not `Get-ChildItem`. These aliases only exist on Windows, where unless one is explicitly running a Unix-ish shell (WSL, Cygwin, MinGW, MSYS2, etc), PS will use these aliases. Plus, `ls`, `mv`, `cp`, and `rm` never really existed on Windows; the equivalent cmd binaries were `dir`, `move`, `copy`/`robocopy`, `del`. Finally, this is a fairly tired argument against PowerShell... [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/learn/shell/using-aliases?view=powershell-7.3#compatibility-aliases-in-windows https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/learn...
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    If you are thinking I am a sarcastic detractor, I am not. I whole heartedly believe PowerShell is superior in every way that matters to more common POSIX shells. I was unaware of the difference between Windows and Linux in this regard as I don't tend to use PowerShell on the few Linux systems I run. However, I maintain that it is still a mistake to alias them in Windows because anyone coming from a POSIX shell background will be misled. > the equivalent cmd binaries were `dir`, `move`, `copy`/`robocopy`, `del`. Nit: only robocopy is a binary in the list. The rest are built in to the command shell.
    - delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
      > sarcastic detractor My sarcasm detector led me into thinking you were a sarcastic detractor (heh). I get your point though; perhaps PowerShell should've stuck with the initialism aliases only (`gci`, `cpi`, `ri`, etc) and people wouldn't have nitpicked on this as though it was some powerful argument against PS. Perhaps there could've been a banner saying `hey, this is Windows, use `gci` instead of `ls` with these xyz options`.
  - sumtechguy 4y ago
    It may be a 'tired' argument but a valid one. For me I keep using 'dosisms' in powershell. But they do not work because those commands are actually something different and you need the params for those items. One that gets me every time is is the 'dir /s' command which does not work in powershell because you should use -recurse which is the command for Get-ChildItem which is what it is really calling. I think most people have this issue when jumping between shells. Each one is has its own way of working. But adding aliases, I can see why they did it. The problem is it was poorly done up front. Now they are kind of stuck with it and we get to deal with it. Also you may be expecting all of the sorting items out of dir/ls. But you do not get those. You get to pipe it and sort it in a secondary step. Which is fine. But can is a bit of a pain when you are used to something like 'dir /os' vs 'Get-ChildItem . | Sort-Object -Property Length'. It just takes some getting used to. But seems longer and more verbose to get the same effect. It is nicer though when you want to act on those items though (which is where powershell shines) as everything is in an object and you can slice it down. But using it for 'shell' things like where is a file and what is the biggest in a folder it falls a bit flat and feels like the object model is in the way.
chasil 4y ago
...and the moment that Powershell discovers that $? must be a numeric type, and not a boolean, it will be taken seriously. Wow.
- delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
  > $? must be a numeric type, and not a boolean $LASTEXITCODE https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_automatic_variables?view=powershell-7.3#lastexitcode https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...
  - chasil 4y ago
    I am quite aware of that.

The author must familiarize himself with PowerShell. Aside from the terrible, terrible idea of using verbs as prefixes, Power Shell is a great combination between a programming language and a shell.

zwischenzug 4y ago

I remember joking that PowerShell is a properly architected shell, which is why it was so uninspiring to use. I still use Bourne-derived shells because they're just so damn human.

btschaegg 4y ago
Well it might work as a joke, but I have to say that I had more than enough experiences with Powershell that drastically disprove that notion in my opinion. That is not to say that bash and consorts are much better, but e.g. a shell that decides to arbitrarily violate its normal error handling logic based on internal voodoo heuristics about if it's running in a console or not [1] is pretty much the total antithesis of sanely architected in my book. As in: Architecture must be the reason someone thought this insane scheme has any merit. And arbitrarily starting to throw exceptions whenever a subprocess dares to write to stderr, especially if the shell doesn't do this in normal operation, doesn't get any other label than "insane" from me. [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57272097 https://stackoverflow.com/a/57272097
- zwischenzug 4y ago
  Fair enough, I only used PS for a day or two.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

Also the terrible terrible idea of using common unix shell command names as aliases for PowerShell commands that are similar but don't quite work the same way and take entirely different parameters. ...and that time period where Invoke-WebRequest used IE for parsing by default. But other than those flaws I agree that it is really great.

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
> using common unix shell command names as aliases for PowerShell commands that are similar but don't quite work the same way On any Linux/Unix, when `ls` is called, PS runs the native `ls` and not `Get-ChildItem`. These aliases only exist on Windows, where unless one is explicitly running a Unix-ish shell (WSL, Cygwin, MinGW, MSYS2, etc), PS will use these aliases. Plus, `ls`, `mv`, `cp`, and `rm` never really existed on Windows; the equivalent cmd binaries were `dir`, `move`, `copy`/`robocopy`, `del`. Finally, this is a fairly tired argument against PowerShell... [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/learn/shell/using-aliases?view=powershell-7.3#compatibility-aliases-in-windows https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/learn...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  If you are thinking I am a sarcastic detractor, I am not. I whole heartedly believe PowerShell is superior in every way that matters to more common POSIX shells. I was unaware of the difference between Windows and Linux in this regard as I don't tend to use PowerShell on the few Linux systems I run. However, I maintain that it is still a mistake to alias them in Windows because anyone coming from a POSIX shell background will be misled. > the equivalent cmd binaries were `dir`, `move`, `copy`/`robocopy`, `del`. Nit: only robocopy is a binary in the list. The rest are built in to the command shell.
  - delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
    > sarcastic detractor My sarcasm detector led me into thinking you were a sarcastic detractor (heh). I get your point though; perhaps PowerShell should've stuck with the initialism aliases only (`gci`, `cpi`, `ri`, etc) and people wouldn't have nitpicked on this as though it was some powerful argument against PS. Perhaps there could've been a banner saying `hey, this is Windows, use `gci` instead of `ls` with these xyz options`.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  It may be a 'tired' argument but a valid one. For me I keep using 'dosisms' in powershell. But they do not work because those commands are actually something different and you need the params for those items. One that gets me every time is is the 'dir /s' command which does not work in powershell because you should use -recurse which is the command for Get-ChildItem which is what it is really calling. I think most people have this issue when jumping between shells. Each one is has its own way of working. But adding aliases, I can see why they did it. The problem is it was poorly done up front. Now they are kind of stuck with it and we get to deal with it. Also you may be expecting all of the sorting items out of dir/ls. But you do not get those. You get to pipe it and sort it in a secondary step. Which is fine. But can is a bit of a pain when you are used to something like 'dir /os' vs 'Get-ChildItem . | Sort-Object -Property Length'. It just takes some getting used to. But seems longer and more verbose to get the same effect. It is nicer though when you want to act on those items though (which is where powershell shines) as everything is in an object and you can slice it down. But using it for 'shell' things like where is a file and what is the biggest in a folder it falls a bit flat and feels like the object model is in the way.

chasil 4y ago

...and the moment that Powershell discovers that $? must be a numeric type, and not a boolean, it will be taken seriously. Wow.

delta_p_delta_x 4y ago
> $? must be a numeric type, and not a boolean $LASTEXITCODE https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_automatic_variables?view=powershell-7.3#lastexitcode https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsof...
- chasil 4y ago
  I am quite aware of that.