| RFC | Author | Status | SupercededBy | Version | Area | Comments Due | Plan to implement |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
RFC0030 |
Steve Lee |
Final |
N/A |
1.0 |
Engine-CommandCompleter |
12/4/2018 |
true |
PowerShell rules for cmdlet naming is to be descriptive. Cloud services cmdlets tend to be granular and vast.
Azure PowerShell, for example, has a cmdlet called New-AzSqlServerDisasterRecoveryConfiguration.
If you start with New-Az and hit tab, you'll get 334 matches.
Then you continue typing New-AzSql and hit tab, you still get 19 matches.
These cmdlets typically do not have aliases since the aliases would be very long.
As a PowerShell user,
I can tab complete long cmdlet names easily and predictably,
so that I can be more efficient using PowerShell interactively.
Since PowerShell rule for cmdlet naming relies on Pascal Casing, you can consistently predict a long cmdlet name used often by simply specifying the uppercase letters:
PS /Users/steve> n-assdrc<tab>
becomes
PS /Users/steve> New-AzSqlServerDisasterRecoveryConfiguration
The dash is still required to avoid short abbreviations from conflicting with aliases. The abbreviation is not an alias as it does not work if specified on the command line or script:
PS /Users/steve> n-assdrc
n-assdrc : The term 'n-assdrc' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ n-assdrc
+ ~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (n-assdrc:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException
This feature is intended only to be used interactively with tab completion.
Even shorter commands can benefit:
PS /Users/steve> ct-j<tab>
becomes
PS /Users/steve> ConvertTo-Json
PowerShell convention is for 2 letter abbreviations to entirely be in uppercase.
So you have cmdlets like Set-AzVM.
The abbreviated form is s-avm, not s-av which might be expected.
This feature is not dynamic aliases as readability of scripts would be significantly
impacted if n-assdrc was allowed in scripts.
Partial support where just verb or noun is abbreviated is not supported. This could be added in the future based on customer feedback.
Fuzzy matching is not in scope of this RFC. Fuzzy matching for suggestions on CommandNotFoundException was implemented and could be used as a base for supporting tab completion.
If more variants/algorithms are supported, we may need a way to allow the user to pick which ones they want to use.
Joey Aiello: Accept
Bruce Payette: Accept
Steve Lee: Accept
Hemant Mahawar: Accept
Jim Truher: Accept
Committee agrees that the RFC is complete for the targeted scenario and additional enhancement requires are out of scope and should be separate RFCs.
N/A