Creating a Powershell Profile

Creating a Powershell profile is a great way to create variables or aliases that you can use in your day to day work.

The first thing you need to do is see if you already have a Powershell profile. You can do this by running the following Powershell command.

    test-Path $Profile

if you get the following result.

False

This means that you need to create a Powershell profile. Run this command to create a profile.

    New-Item -path $profile -type file –force

It should return something similar to this.

Directory: C:\Users\your-user-name\Documents\PowerShell

In this folder you will see the file.

Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1

Aliases

In my profile file I have a number of aliases that reduce the amount of typing I have to do.

new-item alias:np -value "C:\Program Files\Notepad++\notepad++.exe"       
new-item alias:today -value Get-Date      
new-item alias:dc -value docker       

For example today will return.

Thursday, 26 October 2023 1:07:46 PM

dc saves me having to type the word docker when I am running a Docker command.

np will kick off Notepad++ editor from the command line.

Variables

I can also create variables that simplify Powershell commands.

$NTIdentity = [Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()      
$NTPrincipal = new-object Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal $NTIdentity     
$IsAdmin = $NTPrincipal.IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole]::Administrator)

These are inherently useful commands but I can also run commands while I open the Powershell terminal.

For example I can set the default folder that the Powershell terminal opens with.

    cd c:\temp\a

Or.

    Set-Location C:\temp\a

In this case I end up with the prompt.

PS C:\Temp\a>

Functions

I can improve my Powershell environment by creating functions to carry out more complex tasks.

Here are some example functions that I use.

Finding files in a directory

    function Find-File($name) {
        ls -recurse -filter "*${name}*" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | foreach {
                $place_path = $_.directory
                echo "${place_path}\${_}"
        }
    }

E.g. find-file usage.txt

Returns all files in the directory structure named usage.txt. This is case-insensitive.

Note: this function is fairly basic and doesn’t work with wildcards such as *.

Grep search

A version of grep.

    function grap($regex, $dir) {
        if ( $dir ) {
                ls $dir | select-string $regex
                return
        }
        $input | select-string $regex
    }

Usage:

    grap "rating|artist" ".\*.py"

Will search all .py files for the words rating or artist. Once again this is limited and will only pick up the first match in each line of text.

Disc volumes

This function produces a nice report on the status of all your systems disc drives.

    function df {
        get-volume
    }

Returns a number of statistics on the status on each drive on your system.

Running Python scripts

I got sick of typing commands like.

python my_script.py

Adding this function can save a lot of typing.

    function py {
        param (
            [string] $ScriptName
        )

        $ScriptFile = $ScriptName + ".py"

        python $ScriptFile
    }

Now, to run a script.

py my_script

There are an unlimited number of ways you can improve your Powershell environment and you should change your environment to suit your particular needs.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that there are a number of things you can do to change the command prompt and colour themes in your terminal. I’ll leave this up to you to explore.