PowerShell Aliases, PSScriptAnalyzer and VSCode

Question

Is there a way to suppress PSScriptAnalyzer from highlighting alias warnings? e.g.

'rm' is an alias of 'Remove-Item'. Aliases can introduce possible problems and make scripts hard to maintain. Please consider changing alias to its full content.

Aliases in PowerShell are extremely useful. I have a simple rule: I only ever use the rational built-in aliases in scripts (I ignore the strange ones). Why? Well, most of these particular aliases are now 13 years old and have never changed (PowerShell 1.0 release November 14, 2006). So, for example, % or ls or cd are reliable in 99.99% of cases. I consider 99.99% reliability to be "good enough". Possibly the single-most-over-repeated comment on all PowerShell StackOverflow questions is "Note: it is not recommended to use aliases in PowerShell scripts as they can change!" (not recommended by whom I often wonder? God? ;-) )

However, PSScriptAnalyzer in VSCode highlights all aliases as problems so that my current 7,000 line script has 488 such "problems". Is there a way to tell PSScriptAnalyzer that I like aliases, I intend to use aliases for the vastly more concise code, clarity, and greatly improved readability that they give me, and so I do not consider them to be problems?

Gavotte

"have never changed" - this is not the case. A number of aliases have been removed in recent releases – Chartier

I can believe that Mathias. However, the aliases that I use are of the "have never changed" variety. e.g. %, ls, cd etc. I have never been one for using the more exotic (and frankly weird) aliases like rvpa (Resolve-Path), rwmi (Remove-WmiObject), sajb (Start-Job) etc. I use only those that are ultra-reliable - and by ultra-reliable, I mean "have never changed in 13 years" and "the kind of commands that I use very often every time I use PowerShell" (which rvpa never falls into the category of). – Gavotte

sc -> Set-Content works in 5.1, was removed in 6.2 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ regardless: yes, you can suppress individual rules. Open the Command Palette (Shift+Ctrl+P), search for "Select PSScriptAnalyzer Rules" and uncheck PSAvoidUsingCmdletAliases – Chartier

sc is one that I have never used in any script, but good one (I'm guessing that they removed this as it might conflict with a linux command? I won't be having that problem in using ls or mv then! :-p ). Thanks Mathias, I'll go and look for these rules now! – Gavotte

if you REALLY want to make your code non-portable, difficult to read, AND just freaking ugly [grin] ... PSScriptAnalyzer has options to disable various tests - and can do so on a per script/line/everything basis. the instructions are on the PSSA site. – Randarandal

I just want to suppress alias nagging really, but that's excellent thanks, I'll look it up :). The aliases I use make my code highly portable, easy to read and much better looking than those folks that create unreadable swamps of ForEach-Object, GetChild-Item (instead of ls), Remove-Item (instead of rm) everywhere. A philosophical question: why is rm in Linux NOT freaking ugly, but is in PowerShell? ... Another philosophical question: why do people NOT feel the need to say "Note: it is not recommended to use functions in scripts as function names can change!" hmm... lol :-D – Gavotte

Pretty sure you'd be in a minority about thinking your code is more portable OR readable using aliases. There are many people who would find such code indecipherable. – Expurgatory

I can say with absolute certainty that "indecipherable" is not true. e.g. dir D:\ | more. I bet more than a million dollars that you would be extremely hard-pressed to find even a single person with rudimentary programming ability that would find this "indecipherable". I get that you are against aliases, I just find the almost religious adherence to never using aliases (and the almost resentment projected at anyone that dares too!) to be slightly ... bewildering. I completely defend/support your right to not use aliases, I just find it somewhat "rigid". :-) – Gavotte

Answer 1

Mathias' comment states to search for "Select PSScriptAnalyzer Rules" but I was not able to find that setting (VS 1.58.2, ms-vscode.powershell 2021.6.2).

The solution I found was to change the "Script Analysis: Settings Path" to point to a created file that contains the following code1 to whitelist certain aliases. Below I've un-commented the relevant section.

@{
# Only diagnostic records of the specified severity will be generated.
# Uncomment the following line if you only want Errors and Warnings but
# not Information diagnostic records.
#Severity = @('Error','Warning')

# Analyze **only** the following rules. Use IncludeRules when you want
# to invoke only a small subset of the default rules.
IncludeRules = @('PSAvoidDefaultValueSwitchParameter',
                  'PSMisleadingBacktick',
                  'PSMissingModuleManifestField',
                  'PSReservedCmdletChar',
                  'PSReservedParams',
                  'PSShouldProcess',
                  'PSUseApprovedVerbs',
                  'PSAvoidUsingCmdletAliases',
                  'PSUseDeclaredVarsMoreThanAssignments')

# Do not analyze the following rules. Use ExcludeRules when you have
# commented out the IncludeRules settings above and want to include all
# the default rules except for those you exclude below.
# Note: if a rule is in both IncludeRules and ExcludeRules, the rule
# will be excluded.
#ExcludeRules = @('PSAvoidUsingWriteHost')

# You can use rule configuration to configure rules that support it:
Rules = @{
    PSAvoidUsingCmdletAliases = @{
        Whitelist = @("cd")
    }
}
}

[1] https://github.com/PowerShell/vscode-powershell/blob/master/examples/PSScriptAnalyzerSettings.psd1

Wiltonwiltsey