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
