Bash to PowerShell Cheat Sheet -- Virtualization Review

How-To

Bash to PowerShell Cheat Sheet

While Tom was learning PowerShell, he found himself trying to translate the bash commands he was familiar with into the PowerShell commands that accomplish the same task, coming up with this handy cheat sheet.

By Tom Fenton
07/27/2020

Recently I have been doing some PowerShell programming, which still presented a learning curve despite my rich background in bash programming. PowerShell and bash have programming languages that are, although both very good at what they do, based on totally disparate philosophies. An example that perhaps best underlines this difference is that PowerShell cmdlets return objects, while bash commands return text.

While I was learning PowerShell, I found myself trying to translate the bash commands I was familiar with into the PowerShell commands that accomplish the same task. I started to track these commands, and below is a list that I came up with.

Bash	PowerShell	PowerShell Alias	Example	Note

Cd	Set-Location	Cd, sl, chdir	Set-Location -Path .\Desktop\	Change Directory
Cp	Copy-Item	Cp, copy cpi	Copy-Item -Path .\DemoFile.xlsx -Destination .\NewFile.xlsx	Copy a file
Find	Get-ChildItem		Get-ChildItem -Filter "RDP" -Recurse -File	Find a file
Kill	Stop-Process		Get-Process -Name Zoom
Ls	Get-ChildItem	Ls, dir	Get-ChildItem $env:USERPROFILE\desktop \| Sort-Object -Property LastWriteTime
Man	Get-Help		Get-Help Test-Connection -Full	Manual for a command
Man -k	Get-Command		Get-Command -Name "dns"	Find a command
Mkdir	New-Item		New-Item -ItemType Directory -Name ‘Articles’	Make directory
Ping	Test-Connection		Test-Connection 10.0.0.6 \| Format-Table -AutoSize
Ps	Get-Process		Get-Process zoom \| FL
pwd	Get-Location	Pwd, gl	Get-Location	Get present working directory
Rm	Remove-Item	Rm, ri, rmdir, rd, del	Remove-Item -Recuse -Force	Remove directory
Tail	Get-Content		Get-Content -Tail 7 '.\CU Insights - Computer Trends.csv'	Display the last 7 lines of a text file
Touch	New-Item		New-Item -ItemType File -Name “Article”	Create a new, empty file
Wc	Measure-Object		Get-Content '.\CU Insights - Computer Trends (5).csv' \| Measure-Object -Character -Line -Word	Wc = Word count
Whoami	whoami		whoamu	Display the username

Below are few screen captures of these PowerShell commands being run.

Although PowerShell is a different beast than bash, and it has taken time for me to wrap my head around it, I do see the power of having object rather than text-based output. It does offer some advantages in flexibility, albeit at the expense of complexity. Hopefully you will find the above commands helpful if you need to transition from bash to PowerShell. As an alternative, you can always use Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to use bash and other Linux/Unix tools you are familiar with on your Windows 10 system.

About the Author

Tom Fenton has a wealth of hands-on IT experience gained over the past 30 years in a variety of technologies, with the past 20 years focusing on virtualization and storage. He previously worked as a Technical Marketing Manager for ControlUp. He also previously worked at VMware in Staff and Senior level positions. He has also worked as a Senior Validation Engineer with The Taneja Group, where he headed the Validation Service Lab and was instrumental in starting up its vSphere Virtual Volumes practice. He's on X @vDoppler.