Comments on: Translating from cmd.exe to PowerShell: dir

By: Joaquin Menchaca

Joaquin Menchaca — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 03:55:40 +0000

I just have to say thank you for this information. Most books and material just focus on object access and stuff, but not much in the way of practical material do do real world shell stuff.

This material helps.

By: trix

trix — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:15:49 +0000

Im a powershell newbie and this took me ages so i would be greatfull if anyone knows of a better way. I essentailly wanted the powershell dir to behave like the cmd.exe dir and put directories at the top. this is what i ended up with:

$results = Get-ChildItem | where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer -eq 1 }
$results2 = Get-ChildItem | Where-Object { $_.PSIsContainer -eq 0 }
$results+$results2

with
remove-item alias:\dir
set-alias dir C:\\Cmd-Dir.ps1
in my profile

is there a simpler way!?

thanks

By: Harri

Harri — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 06:11:34 +0000

Also dot (.) seems to work in function name - so you can define: function cd..{set-location ..} in profile.

By: DBMwS

DBMwS — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 01:52:48 +0000

NP, there Tommy, I just wanted to point out that there are many ways(too many possibly ? ;)) to do the same thing.

It’s just amazing how much you can do with just one line with PowerShell… ;)

By: Tommy Williams

Tommy Williams — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:21:14 +0000

Thanks for the pointer to using IO.FileAttributes and, in particular, the use of the binary-and comparison operator. I’m going to spend some time reading through your blog, too — looks like you have some good info there.

By: DBMwS

DBMwS — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:06:15 +0000

Woops.
Sorry about reposting. I have forgotten to include filter for directory. So would you moderate my previous post to include “-and $_.PsIsContainer”?
Here is the revised version
ls -fo | ? { ($_.attributes -band 2) -and $_.PsIsContainer}

By: DBMwS

DBMwS — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 21:02:18 +0000

For dir /a:hd, although I liked your approach on displaying hidden files, there is another solution that i have come up with(well it’s been around to be honest) and it’s a bit longer

My solution would basically check the “flag” of attribute instead of comparing the string.

Longest version:
ls -Force | ? { ($_.attributes -band [System.IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden”) -eq [System.IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden” }

You can leave out “System” and it becomes
Shorter version:
ls -Force | ? { ($_.attributes -band [IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden”) -eq [IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden” }

Now, there is no need to check if value of “($_.attributes -band [IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden”)” is equal to the value of ‘[IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden”‘ at all, so
Even Shorter version:
ls -Force | ? { ($_.attributes -band [IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden”) }

Well, you can’t leave out “[IO.FileAttributes]” type there because without casting “HIdden”, to FileAttributes, PowerShell would consider “Hidden” as string

Btw, you can actually substitute ‘-band [IO.FileAttributes]“Hidden”‘ with “-band 2″ since the enum value of Hidden is 2.

The SHORTEST version:
# but not recommended for readability issue IMHO
ls -fo | ? { ($_.attributes -band 2) }