Donovan Brown

Most often when I am creating a directory in PowerShell I also want to navigate into that folder. I can do that on a single line like this.

New-Item -Path temp -ItemType Directory; Set-Location -Path temp

Or using aliases

md temp; cd temp

But that is just too much typing. So, I decided to create a function named mcd for make and change directory and have it loaded each time I start PowerShell. In this post I will explain how to do this.

First, we need to create the function. To do that I started Visual Studio code. I also installed the PowerShell extension for Code.

With Code ready I created a new file and changed the language mode from Plain Text to PowerShell. Copy and paste the code below into the file.

function mcd {
   [CmdletBinding()]
   param(
      [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
      $Path
   )

   New-Item -Path $Path -ItemType Directory

   Set-Location -Path $Path
}

Save the file so you we can dot source the file in our PowerShell profile. I named my file utils.ps1 and saved it in C:\Users\me\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Scripts.

Now we must update our profile to dot source the file we just created. Start PowerShell and type the following:

code $Profile

This will start Code with your current profile script loaded or create a new file for you if you do not already have one.

Add to the bottom of the file

. C:\Users\me\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Scripts\utils.ps1

Now just save and close the file. Now every new PowerShell session you start you will be able to use mcd to create and navigate into a folder.

PS C:\> mcd test


    Directory: C:\


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----         2/3/2018  11:41 AM                test


PS C:\test>