Comments on: A Problem with the Microsoft Script Repository?

By: gary

gary — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:04:10 +0000

Try this script. If you run this within PowerGUI and step through each line of code as it runs, you’ll find that the “write-output” and the return value of 2 all get stuffed into the variable $result. So, $result really is assigned a system.object[] value, that contains two things (e.g. $result[0] will be the text string, and $result[1] will be the number 2.

# —–
function test() {Write-Output “A line of text.”;return 2}
Write-Output “Begin”
$result = test
Write-Output “End, $result”
# —–

By: Fedor

Fedor — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:50:57 +0000

Here is a nice touch to the above.
Place your script into a function, let’s call it TIME. Create a simple Menu that depending on the response executes the function:

Press 1 <– To output the results to the console/screen
Press 2 <– To output the results to a file
$Response = Read-Host “Please make your selection ”

If ($Response -eq 1) {TIME}
else {TIME | out-file -filepath “C:\LocalTime.txt” -append}

#You are Done!

By: shravan

shravan — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:26:21 +0000

how do i obtain the redirected drive using powershell scripts

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:38:30 +0000

Of course, using Write-Output doesn’t allow colors, so one of the attractive features of PowerShell is lost (I’d ~like~ to use it to call attention to certain results, but now I can’t since I also want to redirect results to a file).

Compound this with Functions’ behavior of “returning” all output as a result unless it’s sent to Write-Host, and we get into an overly difficult game of Twister….

By: Jesse Hamrick

Jesse Hamrick — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:42:10 +0000

Don,
Thanks for providing more information on once the Write-Host cmdlet ouputs to the screen, there is no data to enter the pipeline.
Just want to tweak your examples as I’m getting a datatype error with example 1.

Example 1.

Write-Output (1, 2, 3) | Where {$_ -gt 1}

Example 2.

Write-Host (1, 2, 3) | Where {$_ -gt 1}

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 19:09:04 +0000

Some background: Write-Host sends objects directly to Out-Host, which displays them on the screen. There’s no change for redirection to step in.

Write-Output, on the other hand, writes objects to the pipeline. Normally, the pipeline ends inn Out-Default - which redirects objects to Out-Host and thus displays them on-screen. However, if you do something like

Dir | Out-File c:\dir.txt

The objects go from the pipeline into a file. Because most of the Out-* cmdlets don’t emit objects, the pipeline after Out-File is empty, so nothing is displayed on-screen.

There IS a lot of misunderstanding about the difference between Write-Host and Write-Output. A simple example is:

Write-Output 1,2,3 | Where { $_ -gt 1 }
Write-Host 1,2,3 | Where { $_ -gt 1 }

In the first, three objects are dumped into the pipeline. Where-Object filters out the first, leaving two to go on to Out-Default and then Out-Host. So you see 2 and 3. In the second example, three objects are written to Out-Host. There’s nothing in the pipeline, so Where-Object has nothing to filter. Nothing goes to Out-Default. So you see 1, 2, and 3 - because they bypassed the pipeline and went directly to the screen.

About the only way to “redirect” Write-Host is to use Start-Transcript and Stop-Transcript, since they explicitly grab everything that appears on-screen, no matter how it gets there.