Working Location

 

SHORT DESCRIPTION

Accessing items from the working location in the Windows PowerShell

 

LONG DESCRIPTION

The current working location is the default location that commands point to. In other words, this is the location that PowerShell uses if you do not supply an explicit path to the item or location being affected by the command. In most cases, the current working location will be a drive accessed through the FileSystem PowerShell Provider and, in some cases, a directory on that drive. For example, you might set your current working location as c:\program files\Windows PowerShell. As a result, all commands are processed from this location unless another path is explicitly provided.

 

PowerShell maintains the current working location for each drive even when the drive is not the current drive. This allows you to access items from the current working location by referring only to the drive of another location. For example, suppose that your current working location is c:\windows. Now suppose you use the following command to change your current working location to the hklm: drive:

 

 

Although your current location is now the registry drive, you can still access items in the c:\windows directory simply by using the C drive, as shown in the following example:

 

 

PowerShell remembers that your current working location for that drive is the Windows directory so it retrieves items from that directory. The results would be the same as specifying Get-ChildItem c:\windows.

 

In PowerShell, you can use the Get-Location command to determine the current working location, and you can use the Set-Location command to set the current working location. For example, the following command sets the current working location to the Windows directory of the C drive:

 

 

Once you set the current working location, you can still access items from other drives simply by including the drive name (followed by a colon) in the command, as shown in the following example:

 

 

The command retrieves a list of items in the Software container of the HKEY Local Machine hive in the Registry.

 

PowerShell also allows you to use special characters to represent the current working location and its parent location. To represent the current working location, use a single period. To represent the parent of the current working location, use two periods. For example, the following specifies a subdirectory named system in the current working location:

 

 

If the current working location is c:\windows, then this command returns a list of all the items in c:\windows\system. However, if you use a double period, the parent directory of the current working directory is used, as shown in the following example:

 

 

In this case, PowerShell treats the double periods as the C drive, so the command retrieves all items in c:\program files.

 

A path beginning with a slash identifies a path from the root of the current drive. For example, if your current working location is c:\program files\Windows PowerShell, the root of your drive is C. As a result, the following command lists all items in the c:\windows directory:

 

 

If you do not specify a path beginning with a drive name, slash, or period when supplying the name of a container or item, then the container or item is assumed to be located in the current working location. For example, if your current working location is c:\windows, the following command will return all items in the c:\windows\system

directory:

 

 

If you were to specify a filename rather than a directory name, PowerShell would return details about that file, assuming that file was located in the current working location.

 

SEE ALSO

For information about location-related Cmdlets, use the help alias (for the Get-Help Cmdlet) plus the Cmdlet name. For example, to view information about the Set-Location Cmdlet, enter the following command:

 

 

For information about PowerShell Providers, enter the following command at the PowerShell command prompt:

 

 

For information about path syntax, enter the following command: