Command Detail - A

alias (list all the aliases)

The Powershell equivalent of typing alias at the bash prompt is:

get-alias

alias (set an alias)

At it's simplest, the powershell equivalent of the unix 'alias' when it's used to set an alias is 'set-alias'

set-alias ss select-string

However, there's a slight wrinkle....

In unix, you can do this

alias bdump="cd /u01/app/oracle/admin/$ORACLE_SID/bdump/"

If you try doing this in Powershell, it doesn't work so well. If you do this:

set-alias cdtemp "cd c:\temp"
cdtemp

...then you get this error:

cdtemp : The term 'cd c:\temp' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

At line:1 char:1

+ cdtemp

+ ~~~~~~

    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (cd c:\temp:String) [], 

    CommandNotFoundException

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

A way around this is to create a function instead:

remove-item -path alias:cdtemp

function cdtemp {cd c:\temp}

You could then create an alias for the function:

set-alias cdt cdtemp

apropos

apropos is one of my favourite bash commands, not so much for what it does...but because I like the word 'apropos'.

I'm not sure it exists on all flavours of *nix, but in bash apropos returns a list of all the man pages which have something to do with what you're searching for. If apropos isn't implemented on your system you can use man -k instead.

Anyway on bash, if you type:

apropos process

...then you get:

AF_LOCAL [unix]      (7)  - Sockets for local interprocess communication

AF_UNIX [unix]       (7)  - Sockets for local interprocess communication

Apache2::Process     (3pm)  - Perl API for Apache process record

BSD::Resource        (3pm)  - BSD process resource limit and priority functions

CPU_CLR [sched_setaffinity] (2)  - set and get a process's CPU affinity mask

CPU_ISSET [sched_setaffinity] (2)  - set and get a process's CPU affinity mask

CPU_SET [sched_setaffinity] (2)  - set and get a process's CPU affinity mask

CPU_ZERO [sched_setaffinity] (2)  - set and get a process's CPU affinity mask

GConf2              (rpm) - A process-transparent configuration system

The Powershell equivalent of apropos or man -k is simply get-help

get-help process

Name                  Category  Module     Synopsis

----                  --------  ------     --------

get-dbprocesses       Function             Get processes for a particul...

show-dbprocesses      Function             Show processes for a particu...

Debug-Process         Cmdlet    Microso... Debugs one or more processes...

Get-Process           Cmdlet    Microso... Gets the processes that are ...

This is quite a nice feature of PowerShell compared to Bash. If get-help in Powershell shell scores a 'direct hit' (i.e. you type something like get-help debug-process) it will show you the help for that particular function. If you type something more vague, it will show you a list of all the help pages you might be interested in.

By contrast if you typed man process at the Bash prompt, you'd just get

No manual entry for process