What is the PowerShell Verb-Noun definition for the mkdir alias?

Question

In Windows PowerShell, the alias md relates to the definition mkdir, which also seems to be an alias (i.e. not a Verb-Noun definition.) as this command indicates:

: get-item -path alias:* | where-object {$_.Definition -eq "mkdir"}

CommandType     Name
-----------     ----
Alias           md -> mkdir

Answer 1

PowerShell's Get-Command cmdlet allows you to reflect on command names:

PS> Get-Command md

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source                 
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------                 
Alias           md -> mkdir                                                                          

This tells you that md is an alias and that it resolved to a command named mkdir.

PS> Get-Command mkdir

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source                 
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------                 
Function        mkdir                                                                                

This tells you that mkdir is a function.

To see that function's definition (function body), access the .Definition property on the object returned by Get-Command:

(Get-Command mkdir).Definition # outputs the function's body

The output of the above will tell you that mkdir is a proxy function for New-Item -ItemType Directory.
In other words: it provides a file-system-specific shortcut for creating directories to the more generic New-Item cmdlet - see Get-Help about_Providers to learn about PowerShell's generalization of the concept of drives.