Windows LiveWindows Live™
 
 
Keith's profileKeith Hill's BlogPhotosBlogListsMore Tools Help

Blog
    July 17

    A Simple Go Function to Simplify Navigating to Popular Directories

    Before PowerShell came along I had a number of doskey aliases set up like “gt” to go to the temp dir.  I have since converted those aliases to a single g function (short for “go”):

       1: function g($shortcut) {
       2:     $ht = @{
       3:         bin = "C:\Bin";
       4:         doc = "$([Environment]::GetFolderPath('MyDocuments'))";
       5:         sys = "$env:SystemRoot\System32";
       6:         t   = "$env:Temp";
       7:         win = "$env:SystemRoot";
       8:         cf  = "$env:CommonProgramFiles";
       9:         pf  = "$env:ProgramFiles";
      10:         www = "$env:SystemDrive\inetpub\wwwroot";
      11:         gac = "$env:SystemRoot\Assembly\GAC";
      12:         tfs = "C:\Tfs"
      13:         clr = "$([System.Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeEnvironment]::GetRuntimeDirectory())";
      14:     }
      15:  
      16:     if ($shortcut) {
      17:         if (!$ht["$shortcut"]) { 
      18:             throw "$shortcut isn't valid shortcut. Execute g with no params to see valid shortcuts." 
      19:         }
      20:         cd $ht.$shortcut
      21:     }
      22:     else {
      23:         "Valid shortcuts are:"
      24:         $ht.Keys | Sort | select @{n='Shortcut';e={$_}},@{n='Destination';e={$ht.$_}}
      25:     }
      26: }

     

    Usage is pretty simple.  Execute g to see all shortcuts and the associated location:

    PS C:\> g
    Valid shortcuts are:

    Shortcut    Destination
    --------   -----------
    bin         C:\Bin
    cf          C:\Program Files\Common Files
    clr         C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\
    doc         C:\Users\Keith\Documents
    gac         C:\Windows\Assembly\GAC
    pf          C:\Program Files
    sys         C:\Windows\System32
    t           C:\Users\Keith\AppData\Local\Temp
    tfs         C:\Tfs
    win         C:\Windows
    www         C:\inetpub\wwwroot

    To set-location to the wwwroot dir execute the following:

    PS C:\> g www
    C:\inetpub\wwwroot

    It’s a trivial function but if you spend a lot of time at the PowerShell prompt, it (or something similar) is quite handy.

    8:42 PM | Permalink | Blog it | PowerShell