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PowerShell Troubleshooting Guide

You're reading from   PowerShell Troubleshooting Guide Minimize debugging time and maximize troubleshooting efficiency by leveraging the unique features of the PowerShell language

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Product type Paperback
Published in Nov 2014
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781782173571
Length 206 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Michael Shepard Michael Shepard
Author Profile Icon Michael Shepard
Michael Shepard
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Table of Contents (10) Chapters Close

Preface 1. PowerShell Primer FREE CHAPTER 2. PowerShell Peculiarities 3. PowerShell Practices 4. PowerShell Professionalism 5. Proactive PowerShell 6. Preparing the Scripting Environment 7. Reactive Practices – Traditional Debugging 8. PowerShell Code Smells Index

Using Write-* cmdlets

When writing PowerShell functions, it is often confusing to know exactly which cmdlet should be used to produce output. There are a number of cmdlets and methods that seem to do the same thing at first glance. The most important thing to remember in this context is that functions should always write objects to the output stream. In order to do this, there are several correct ways and one incorrect way that is frequently used.

Write-Host

PowerShell scripters who are beginners see the Write-Host cmdlet as a simple way to produce output. It is similar to a PRINT statement in many languages and if output to the console is the goal, it is a perfect fit. Unfortunately, the output is made solely to the console (or, in PowerShell terminology, the host). The following screenshot shows the main issue with Write-Host:

Write-Host

Even though the function seems to output the string, attempting to capture the output in a variable shows that the value isn't actually output, but instead is...

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