pushd in Windows Power Shell and Command Prompt

Question

I have a batch script on my computer called cs.bat. When I enter cs in the command prompt, pushd takes me to a certain directory and leaves me there. In PowerShell, the command does the same thing but then brings me back into the starting directory.

Why is this the case? How can I make it so that I stay in the directory after typing 'cs' into power shell?

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '16 at 15:17

Powershell includes aliases for Pushd and Popd.

Get-Alias Pushd : pushd -> Push-Location
Get-Alias Popd : popd -> Pop-Location

You can then use Get-Help Push-Location -Full -Online to get the latest help for that cmdlet.

Then just make a script and test this behavior.

#Sample.ps1 script

#Get current DIR
dir

#push location to some location and DIR there.
Push-Location C:\Scripts\
dir

#at this point, your console will still be in the Push-Location directory
#simply run the Pop-Location cmdlet to switch back.

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 10 '16 at 15:22

This is happening because your "cs.bat" runs in a different process (running cmd.exe) spawned by PowerShell (whereas batch files execute in the same instance when run from cmd). Current directory is a per-process concept, so changing it in one process has no effect on another.

Probably the simplest way to get around it is to write a "cs.ps1" script (or function), that would run in the PowerShell process.

pushd in Windows Power Shell and Command Prompt

2 Answers2