Category: Powershell

Robert Cain goes from verbose to debug mode:

In my previous post, Fun With PowerShell Write-Verbose, I introduced the use of the built in -Verbose switch. In this post we’ll dive into its counterpart, the -Debug switch and its companion Write-Debug cmdlet.

In covering Write-Verbose, I mentioned verbose messages are typically targeted at the average user. The -Debug messages are meant to target the developer. These messages are meant to assist the PowerShell developer in trouble shooting and debugging their code.

Click through for examples of it in action.

Jeffrey Hicks builds a useful function:

If there’s one task I’ve never stopped doing, it is finding files. I am constantly creating new ways to organize files and display them in a meaningful format. Naturally, PowerShell is a great tool for this task. Get-ChildItem is obviously the proper starting point. The cmdlet works fine in getting only files from a folder and I can do basic early filtering by name and extension with wildcards. But my latest task was organizing files by date, and because of the way Get-ChildItem works under-the-hood, I’m going to need to resort to late filtering with Where-Object. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if this is a task I’m likely to repeat, then a PowerShell function is on the drawing board. My goal is to create a function that will display files grouped into aging buckets such as 1-week or 6-months. Even though I’m primarily concerned with age based on the last write time, I (or you) might have a need to base aging on the creation time. Let’s code.

Click through for a great walkthrough and code.

Robert Cain gets verbose on us:

In my previous post, Fun With the PowerShell Switch Parameter, I introduced the use of switches with PowerShell functions. We learned how they work, and how to create your own. For all functions, PowerShell creates a set of switches that are just “built in” to PowerShell. You do not have to explicitly create these yourself, you can simply use them and implement them within your own functions.

Two of the most used are -Verbose and -Debug. When used with the Write-Verbose and Write-Debug cmdlets they will display informational messages to the user of your functions. In this post, we’ll focus on the Verbose switch. The next post in the series will examine the Debug switch.

Click through for examples of how this can be useful.

Kenneth Fisher has a one-liner for us:

As with all programming tasks there are a number of ways to do something, this is just one that I found recently, and that I found to be particularly useful. And by useful I mean it works, and it’s easy.

If you like useful and easy, keep on reading.

Robert Cain continues a series on functions in Powershell:

In my previous post, I covered the use of PowerShell Advanced Functions. I highly suggest you read it if you haven’t, it provides some foundational knowledge that will be important to understand for this post.

In this post, we’ll see how to pipeline enable your functions. Just like a cmdlet, you’ll be able to take input from the pipeline, work with it, then send it out your function back into the pipeline.

Making your code pipeline-friendly is especially important if you want others to use your functions, as that’s one of the biggest benefits of Powershell as a language.

Phil Factor has a new cmdlet for us:

Whatever your development methodology, you need to make changes lightning fast, and the easiest way of doing that is to test frequently. If you are driving this work with PowerShell, which works well, you’ll want to compare the actual results of a process with the expected results. You’re keen to see what’s changed but will often have no idea what to look for beforehand. You need the broad view.

Fine. To do this, you need something that can tell you the differences between two objects. Yes, there is already a cmdlet to do that called Compare-Object. It is useful and ingenious, and works well for what is does, but it doesn’t do enough for our purposes. Let’s run through a few examples, just to explain why I need more for many of the things I do.

Read on to see where Compare-Object could be better and Phil’s solution to the problem.