I'm getting old enough that my fingers hate my lifetime of programming.
I'll save a few keystrokes where I can.
There's something simple most people don't seem to know about PowerShell syntax.
It saves seven characters of typing every you use this, and runs a tiny bit faster.
You never need to specify stuff is in the [System] namespace.
Stop Using [System]
.NET is a huge framework with tons of useful stuff in it. There's a lot of stuff in the System namespaces. Built-in framework functionality often exists in one of the many namespaces in System.
By the time PowerShell was being built, it was pretty clear that leveraging .NET was worth it, and that most people wouldn't want to type six to seven more characters every time.
So, since PowerShell v1, you haven't had to.
You can omit the [System] in any type in any system namespace
So instead of:
[system.collections.generic.list[string]]
We can write:
[collections.generic.list[string]]
Instead of:
[System.Collections.IDictionary]
We can write:
[Collections.IDictionary]
This is true for every system type. On my machine, there are 4722 public types in the system namespace. That's 33054 characters I will never have to type.
It makes scripts shorter and simpler to read.
Also, when PowerShell resolves types, it checks for the shorter names first. This saves a very tiny amount of time in each of your scripts. (I was corrected)
Yet, sadly, I see the system namespace everywhere in people's scripts.
I beg of you all:
-
Save your fingers
-
Make scripts shorter
