Last time, we wrote code to parse DESCRIPT.ION files – and entertained the whole family while we were at it.  This was a manual step, though, so we need to figure out how to make it happen as we use the shell.

Step 2: Automatically refresh the hashtable

In order for this feature to be of any use, we need to ensure that the descriptions hashtable is updated before the directory output hits the screen.  Our primary choices are:

• When we format the directory listing
• When we list the directory items
• When we change directories

The formatting files should primarily be used for formatting, not heavy procedural code, so that rules out the formatting option.  Directory listing (get-childitem) is really the best injection point, but has many commonly used parameters.  Because of that, shimming ourselves into that process is likely to be buggy and complex.  That rules out that option.  That leaves “when we change directories” as the best place to insert our code.

I personally use the ‘cd’ alias to change directories on my system.  Since we want to inject some code into this process, we’ll have to make a new function called ‘cd.’  This function changes to the new directory, and then refreshes the “lee.holmes.descriptions” hashtable with filenames and descriptions from the current directory.  One thing to note is that aliases take precedence over functions.  ‘cd’ is a built-in alias, so we’ll have to also delete the current ‘cd’ alias if it exists.  As a note, this will have a bug / missing feature.  By overriding only the cd functionality, we’ll only be able to get descriptions for items in the current directory.  Something like “dir c:\” won’t show us descriptions for files in other directories.

These are the last handful of lines in my profile-custom.msh:

## Remove the CD alias.  It will override our function if we don't.
if(test-path Alias:\cd) { remove-item Alias:\cd }

## Initialize our default 'descriptions' hashtable to hold
## a mapping of filename to description.
${GLOBAL:lee.holmes.descriptions} = @{}

## Change to a new location.  Once there, refresh the 'descriptions'
## hashtable with the filenames and descriptions of items in the
## current location.
function cd($location)
{
   ## We could use set-location here, but this will also let
   ## us use pop-location to go backwards in our directory navigation
   ## history.  
   push-location $location

   ## Clear the descriptions hashtable, and define the regular expression
   ## that parses a DESCRIPT.ION file
   ${GLOBAL:lee.holmes.descriptions} = @{}
   $descriptionRegex = "`"(?<file>[^`"]*)`" (?<text>.*)|(?<file>[^ ]*) (?<text>.*)"

   ## Go through each line in DESCRIPT.ION, if it exists, and parse out the
   ## filename / description.
   if(test-path descript.ion)
   {
      foreach($line in get-content descript.ion)
      {
         if($line -match $descriptionRegex)
         {
            ${lee.holmes.descriptions}[$matches.file] = $matches.text
         }
      }
   }
}

Stay tuned – we’ll wrap this up next time.

[Edit: Monad has now been renamed to Windows PowerShell. This script or discussion may require slight adjustments before it applies directly to newer builds.]