What is the difference between Anaconda Prompt and Anaconda Powershell Prompt?

I am learning Python using Anaconda. Earlier I had only **Anaconda Prompt**. But after recent update of Anaconda through

conda update conda

I came to see **Anaconda Powershell Prompt**. Few commands I tried in new **Powershell Prompt** which I used to do earlier in **Anaconda Prompt**. These commands worked fine.

Now, my question is what is the reason behind giving 2 command prompts by Anaconda? Is there any difference between their functionalities or capabilities?

My OS is Windows 7 and Conda version is 4.6.12.

Windows offers two command line environments, the traditional "Prompt" ([`cmd.exe`](

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)) and the newer ["PowerShell"](

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). You can use Anaconda with either of these.

The documentation for [Windows commands](

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) covers both.

First, for everything from executing python related commands (`python`, `ipython`, `jupyter`, `conda`, etc.) to running Python scripts (e.g. `python helloworld.py`), there is **no difference**. So there is no worry ;)

And then, the only difference, as the name suggests, is the **windows shell environment** in which you running `conda` commands: `cmd.exe` (Command Prompt) vs `powershell.exe`.

-----

Now let's talk a bit more about the difference: ([reference][1])

> Briefly, the [`cmd.exe`][2] is a simple shell introduced with Windows NT with the same basic syntax and functionality as DOS. It has relatively limited capabilities, especially when compared to *Unix/Linux shells*.
>
> And [PowerShell][3] is a modern shell implementation with all sorts of extra goodies (e.g. commands colorful highlight).

So, in **Anaconda Powershell Prompt**, you can run some powershell commands like these:

```powershell
> $PSVersionTable

Name Value
---- -----
PSVersion 5.1.18362.752
PSEdition Desktop
PSCompatibleVersions {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...}
BuildVersion 10.0.18362.752
CLRVersion 4.0.30319.42000
WSManStackVersion 3.0
PSRemotingProtocolVersion 2.3
SerializationVersion 1.1.0.1

> $env:PATH
C:\Users\user-name\anaconda3;C:\Users\user-name\anaconda3\Library\mingw-w64\bin;...
```

But in **Anaconda Prompt**, above commands would not be recognized, you can run this though:

```cmd
>ver

Microsoft Windows [版本 10.0.18363.815]
```

-----

And under the hood, **Anaconda Powershell Prompt** and **Anaconda Prompt** just two *shortcuts* invoking different commands:

```
%windir%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -NoExit -Command "& '%USERPROFILE%\anaconda3\shell\condabin\conda-hook.ps1' ; conda activate '%USERPROFILE%\anaconda3' "
```

```
%windir%\System32\cmd.exe "/K" %USERPROFILE%\anaconda3\Scripts\activate.bat %USERPROFILE%\anaconda3
```

[![enter image description here][4]][4]


[1]:

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[2]:

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[3]:

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[4]: