What is the 'alias' keyword in PowerShell?

Question

Looks like it's not an alias.

get-alias alias error: This command cannot find a matching alias because an alias with the name 'alias' does not exist.

and it's not a command

get-command alias error: The term 'alias' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.

Most probably alias is an alias to get-alias cmdlet, but where is it defined?

Answer 1

For some reason, you can omit the get- from a get-xxxx cmdlet in PowerShell and it will add the get- for you.

For instance, you can type hotfix instead of get-hotfix

Answer 2

alias is resolved as Get-Alias, and here's how I found out:

> Trace-Command -Expression { alias } -Name CommandDiscovery -PSHost
DEBUG: CommandDiscovery Information: 0 : Looking up command: alias

<A rather large number of lines deleted, showing exactly where it's looking>

DEBUG: CommandDiscovery Information: 0 : Looking for alias in C:\bin\sysinternals
DEBUG: CommandDiscovery Information: 0 : The command [alias] was not found, trying again with get- prepended
DEBUG: CommandDiscovery Information: 0 : Looking up command: get-alias
DEBUG: CommandDiscovery Information: 0 : Cmdlet found: Get-Alias  Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetAliasCommand

<actual output of get-alias>