> Why is it "Expand-ZipFile", and not "ZipFile-Expand", "Expand-Zip-Format-Archive", or something else? In contrast, "unzip" is short and easy to remember.
Iff you know it already. PowerShell is built around a few conventions. One is that all commands share the Verb-Noun pattern. The verb always comes first. Then there are a bunch of common verbs that all share the same basic meaning, regardless of context. Expand is such a verb that is the opposite of the Compress verb. You may not like then choice of verb but there are always going to be names you didn't choose, so that's probably a petty point. In the end, PowerShell makes it easy to discover commands you may vaguely know exist. I'd argue that also helps remembering them once you know them. Just from knowing unzip you wouldn't be able to guess the command to extract a GZIP file, for example.
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P.S.: I have to retract part of my original post here. Expand-ZipFile does not exist natively in PowerShell. I stumbled across http://ss64.com/ps/zip.html and while that site does have documentation for all built-in cmdlets, I didn't read too closely and this was actually documentation for a wrapper around the .NET framework's own functionality. This does not change the discussion about the name and discoverability, though, except that New-ZipFile should probably use a different verb. Actually, the PowerShell cmdlets for handling ZIP files are Compress-Archive and Expand-Archive, exhibiting the properly mirrored verbs.
Iff you know it already. PowerShell is built around a few conventions. One is that all commands share the Verb-Noun pattern. The verb always comes first. Then there are a bunch of common verbs that all share the same basic meaning, regardless of context. Expand is such a verb that is the opposite of the Compress verb. You may not like then choice of verb but there are always going to be names you didn't choose, so that's probably a petty point. In the end, PowerShell makes it easy to discover commands you may vaguely know exist. I'd argue that also helps remembering them once you know them. Just from knowing unzip you wouldn't be able to guess the command to extract a GZIP file, for example.
___________
P.S.: I have to retract part of my original post here. Expand-ZipFile does not exist natively in PowerShell. I stumbled across http://ss64.com/ps/zip.html and while that site does have documentation for all built-in cmdlets, I didn't read too closely and this was actually documentation for a wrapper around the .NET framework's own functionality. This does not change the discussion about the name and discoverability, though, except that New-ZipFile should probably use a different verb. Actually, the PowerShell cmdlets for handling ZIP files are Compress-Archive and Expand-Archive, exhibiting the properly mirrored verbs.