Powershell: Feature Request - whereis alias for Get-Command

[potatoqualitee]

Summary of the new feature/enhancement

As a part-time Linux user, I am used to using whereis. I would like an alias forGet-Command to whereis in PowerShell. Currently, no whereis alias is available.

Proposed technical implementation details

Considering I use about 10 commands in Linux and most of them have already been aliased in PowerShell since the early days, I would like to create a PR to add this alias to PowerShell itself.

Oh, that's not very technical, but basically I'd read the source code for other Linux-based aliases, and modify for whereis to Get-Command and assume I must have agreement first.

[vexx32]

While there's been quite a bit of opposition to adding some aliases that collide with Linux in the past... I think this makes a lot of sense.

Get-Command can and will find both native utilities as well as PowerShell commands, so despite overshadowing the builtin whereis alias, I think this would largely end up being an enhancement of it, rather than a detractor.

[JustinGrote]

IMHO it's so easy to ship and sync your user profile around that this should stay in the realm of a profile alias. You can also always ship a module that adds tons of aliases and completers, but I think keeping the surface area of the core of powershell small and lean on existing available extensibility is the right move here.

[iSazonov]

There are many Powershell modules and short names (aliases) can conflict. Current intention is to delegate aliases to users - they can create aliases in their profiles as they prefer.

[sba923]

FWIW, here's what I personally have in my toolbox:

• whatis.ps1
• whence.ps1
• dirname.ps1

Unix-isms for PowerShell.zip

This allows constructs such as:

• code (whence foo)
• code (dirname (whence bar))
• ii (dirname (whence baz))

Very crude, but does the job.

(I used MKS Toolkit / Korn Shell as my standard shell / scripting environment on Windows, both at home and at work, for more than 25 years... @BrucePay will remember that was a great environment...)

[BrucePay]

Working at MKS was great. A very cool company.

[sba923]

A nice company to work with, too. I was a beta tester for quite some time. My personal and professional relationship with them started to degrade when product activation was introduced. Then someday they didn't want me as a tester anymore... So I had to bite the bullet and convert all my ksh workloads to... PowerShell ;-)