#PowerShell Location Bookmark for easy and faster navigation I work at the commandline quite a bit and at times I find moving to certain folders very tedious and requires lot of typing (even with tab-completion). For example, one of the locations (may not be very frequent) that I move to when working at PowerShell console or ISE is my local Github folder where all my repositories. Another example could be the configuration folder in C:\Windows\System32. At times, this is frustrating. So, I wanted something simple but useful for me to just type as few characters as possible but still let me navigate to the place I want to.
So, this is when I started writing out something quick and added a few functions to my Profile script. And, then I tweeted that! :)
I saw a few suggestions as a response to this.
##PSDrives One suggestion was to use the New-PSDrive cmdlet and add one for each location I want to quickly move to. This is not very intuitive to me. I can map something like Conf: to go to C:\Windows\System32\Configuration but I lose on tab-completion. I always have to type the full drive name like cd conf:. You can tab-complete within the drive but not the drive itself.
##Jump.Location or ZLocation modules This module is very good. It learns your usage and then auto-completes the path based on the history! This is good if you are frequently accessing a few folders. However, this is not my case, exactly. I wanted an easier way to navigate to a longer path and of course, at the same time make it easy for me to get into some of the folders that I use frequently.
So, here it is: PSBookmark!
##How do you get this? Simple! Either clone my Github repo or get it from PowerShell Gallery!
Install-Module -Name PSBookmark##How to use this?
PS C:\> Get-Command -Module PSBookmark
CommandType Name Version Source
----------- ---- ------- ------
Function Get-LocationBookmark 1.0.0 PSBookmark
Function Remove-LocationBookmark 1.0.0 PSBookmark
Function Save-LocationBookmark 1.0.0 PSBookmark
Function Set-LocationBookmarkAsPWD 1.0.0 PSBookmark
PS C:\> Get-Command -Module PSBookmark -CommandType Alias
CommandType Name Version Source
----------- ---- ------- ------
Alias glb -> Get-LocationBookmark 1.0.0 PSBookmark
Alias goto -> Set-LocationBookmarkAsPWD 1.0.0 PSBookmark
Alias rlb -> Remove-LocationBookmark 1.0.0 PSBookmark
Alias save -> Save-LocationBookmark 1.0.0 PSBookmark Since the idea is to make it easy to navigate and avoid lot of typing, I will use aliases instead of the full function names. I had a hard time coming up with the function names but aliases was very easy.
##Create a new location alias You can use the save command to save alias for either the PWD or a specific path.
#This will save $PWD as scripts
save scripts
#This will save C:\Documents as docs
save docs C:\Documents##jump or goto a saved location alias
#You don't have to type the alias name. Instead, you can just tab complete. This function uses dynamic parameters.
goto docs##Get all saved alias locations
PS C:\> glb
Name Value
---- -----
docs C:\Documents
oss C:\Documents\Github##Removed a saved alias location
#You don't have to type the alias name. Instead, you can just tab complete. This function uses dynamic parameters.
rlb docs#TODO
- This was written in just a few minutes and did not spend any time polishing it. So, there is certainly scope for improvement.
- At the moment, the aliases are stored as a hash table in a .PS1 file in $env:UserProfile. This may change in future.