Show-Command and snippets

Both of these features were cut from the plan at one point. Both got built anyway, and when the question of removing them came up, the argument that settled it was short: people use them.

The Show-Command Add-on, on the View menu, is the visual parameter builder. Pick a command and it becomes a form. Each parameter is a labeled field, parameter sets are kept separate so you can’t mix incompatible ones, and mandatory fields are marked. Fill it in, then either run the composed line or insert it into your script.

It’s easy for fluent scripters to dismiss, and then two situations change their minds. Someone newer to PowerShell uses the form as a map of what a command can do, laid out as choices instead of paragraphs. And someone very experienced meets a cmdlet with eleven parameters at 2 a.m., where the difference between -Confirm and -Force is the difference between a change window and an incident, and lets the form keep them honest. The panel is non-modal and composes against your active session, so commands from modules you’ve imported are all there.

Snippets are the other quiet one. Ctrl+J opens a picker of PowerShell constructs, a function skeleton with comment-based help, try/catch, switch, the shapes you type twenty times a week, and inserts the body at the caret. The picker preselects its first row and Enter accepts, so the whole gesture is Ctrl+J, arrow, Enter. Faster than typing the skeleton badly and fixing it. The built-in set can be turned off in Settings if you want the picker lean.

Neither feature demos well. Nobody’s conference talk peaks at a parameter form. Watch a week of actual work, though, and they’re everywhere: every new function starting with its help block already scaffolded, the unfamiliar cmdlet composed right on the first try. The ISE shipped both, which is where the habit comes from, and the habit is why they’re here.

← All posts