Scott Hanselman

Muscle memory is a heck of a thing. When I want to build code I type Ctrl-Shift-B. I can't not. It's built into my hands! Ctrl-Shift-T is test (even though it's non-standard, it's there, in my hands.

I spend a lot of time at the command line, in Windows Terminal, in PowerShell, using PSReadLine. So why not make a few of these intuitive hotkeys work for me there as well?

PSReadLine supports Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler which is basically hotkey bindings to any arbitrary script block.

Here's Shift-Ctrl-B typing dotnet build and pressing enter. Just add these to your $profile, after you've imported PSReadLine via

if ($host.Name -eq 'ConsoleHost')
{
    Import-Module PSReadLine
}

Building with Shift-Ctrl-B

Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key Ctrl+Shift+b `
                         -BriefDescription BuildCurrentDirectory `
                         -LongDescription "dotnet Build the current directory" `
                         -ScriptBlock {
    [Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine]::RevertLine()
    [Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine]::Insert("dotnet build")
    [Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine]::AcceptLine()
}

Here's Shift-Ctrl-T typing dotnet test and pressing enter.

Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key Ctrl+Shift+t `
                         -BriefDescription TestCurrentDirectory `
                         -LongDescription "dotnet Test the current directory" `
                         -ScriptBlock {
    [Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine]::RevertLine()
    [Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine]::Insert("dotnet test")
    [Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine]::AcceptLine()
}

Here's it in Animated Gif Form! (Using Carnac to see the hotkeys being pressed)

Since I am using Ctrl+Shift+T for testing (that's just me) I did need to manually unbind it from New Tab in my Windows Terminal settings. Just be aware.

{
    "command": "unbound",
    "keys": "shift+ctrl+T"
},

Sweet. What hotkeys will YOU hook up?

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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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