PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Symlinks

  • Article

Here's how to create a shortcut in PowerShell.  Actually, it's how to create a shortcut with COM in PowerShell

function New-ShortCut
{

    param (

[string]$target = $null,

[string]$name = $target,

[string]$parent = (Get-Location).ToString(),

        [string]$iconLocation,

[switch]$help

);

    if ($help -or !$target)
{

@"

New-Shortcut -target <string> -name <string> -parent <string

target: what this is a shortcut to. Required.

name: what is the name of this shortcut. Default to -target's value.

parent: where to create this shortcut. Default to current working
directory.

"@;

        if
($help) {

            return;

} else
{

            Throw "New-Shortcut
-target not specified, required. Exiting.";

}

}

    $shell = New-Object -com WScript.Shell;

$name = $name -replace '[\\\/\:\*\?\"\<\>\|]', "-";

    if (!($name -match "\.lnk$"))
{ $name += ".lnk"; }

    $shortcut = $shell.CreateShortcut($(Join-Path $parent $name));

    $shortcut.TargetPath
= $target;

    if ($iconLocation) {

         if (Test-Path $iconLocation) {

             $shortcut.IconLocation = $iconLocation;

         }
else {

             Write-Warning "-iconLocation
$iconLocation specified, not found.";

         }

    }

    $shortcut.Save();;

}

Not much of a walkthrough - we create a WScript.Shell object, then use it to create a shortcut object.  We populate the object and save it.  End of story.

Oh, this is actually a function in my $profile, so it doesn't use the script outline before.

To review, we learned a few things:

  • PowerShell interacts with COM pretty cleanly.
  • WScript.Shell creates shortcuts.
  • My $profile has stuff I don't ever use.