Windows PowerShell vs CMD: Key Differences With Examples

Windows PowerShell vs CMD comes down to one difference: CMD passes plain text between commands, while PowerShell passes .NET objects you can filter, sort and format. For anything beyond a quick one-liner, PowerShell is the better choice.

CMD (cmd.exe, the Command Prompt) is still around for batch files and old habits. Below I compare the two side by side with commands I ran in PowerShell 7.6, Windows PowerShell 5.1 and CMD on Windows 11.

PowerShell vs CMD at a glance

	CMD	PowerShell
Output	Plain text	.NET objects
Commands	Built-in commands and .exe tools	Cmdlets, functions and .exe tools
Scripts	.bat and .cmd	.ps1
Environment variables	%PATH%	$env:PATH
Last exit code	%ERRORLEVEL%	$LASTEXITCODE
Remote management	Separate tools	Built in (Invoke-Command)
Runs on	Windows only	Windows; PowerShell 7 also on macOS and Linux

Both shells run regular programs like ipconfig, ping and robocopy the same way. The real gap is what happens to the output.

Both can run inside Windows Terminal, as explained in Windows Terminal vs PowerShell.

Text vs objects: the key difference

Ask both shells for a folder listing and look at what comes back. CMD gives you strings, and PowerShell gives you file and folder objects:

$fromCmd = cmd.exe /c "dir /b C:\psfaqs\Compare"
$fromPs = Get-ChildItem -Path C:\psfaqs\Compare

"CMD returns:        $($fromCmd[0].GetType().Name) -> '$($fromCmd[0])'"
"PowerShell returns: $($fromPs[0].GetType().Name) -> Name, Length, LastWriteTime and more"

Output:

CMD returns:        String -> 'logs'
PowerShell returns: DirectoryInfo -> Name, Length, LastWriteTime and more

With text, you’d have to cut columns out of each line to get a file size. With objects, the size is already a number in the Length property.

Filter and sort without parsing text

Here I list every file over 10 KB, largest first. In CMD this needs a FOR loop and string parsing. In PowerShell it’s one pipeline:

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\psfaqs\Compare -File -Recurse |
    Where-Object Length -GT 10KB |
    Sort-Object -Property Length -Descending |
    ForEach-Object { '{0,-11} {1,8:N0} KB' -f $_.Name, ($_.Length / 1KB) }

Output:

app.log          244 KB
report.csv        47 KB

Sorting files by date uses the same idea with LastWriteTime instead of Length.

Familiar CMD commands in PowerShell

PowerShell includes aliases, so dir, cd, copy and del still work. Each one points to a cmdlet:

Get-Alias -Name dir, cd, copy, del, type, cls, md |
    ForEach-Object { '{0,-5} -> {1}' -f $_.Name, $_.Definition }

Output:

dir   -> Get-ChildItem
cd    -> Set-Location
copy  -> Copy-Item
del   -> Remove-Item
type  -> Get-Content
cls   -> Clear-Host
md    -> mkdir

The catch is that aliases take PowerShell parameters, not CMD switches. dir /s fails, because PowerShell reads /s as a path:

try { dir /s C:\psfaqs\Compare -ErrorAction Stop | Out-Null; 'dir /s worked' }
catch { "dir /s: Failed. $($_.Exception.Message)" }

"Get-ChildItem -Recurse found $((Get-ChildItem -Path C:\psfaqs\Compare -Recurse -File).Count) files"

Output:

dir /s: Failed. Cannot find path 'C:\s' because it does not exist.
Get-ChildItem -Recurse found 3 files

Use -Recurse instead of /s, -