"@Echo" behavior in PS scripts

Hi everyone,

writing my first script after 3 years I wanted to implement also
different logs in it - event log support, overview log and debug log (this
script will run as scheduled task).

Event log and overview log are not problem. For debug log, I wanted to save
full output to log file, so in case of any problems I could just check this
"last session" log file.

To my surprise I realized PowerShell behaves like "@Echo Off" in old
batches - is there any way to switch it full output??

Thanks,
Martin

BTW idea behind is pretty simply, I just want to use Start-Transcript to
create debug log of whole script execution
In batches I used MTee for this purpose...

Martin

"Martin Zugec" <martin.zugec@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%2339fP$O3IHA.4164@xxxxxx

So does Start-Transcript solve your problem or is there still an issue here?

Well it doesn't work of course.

In batches:
- Default - output everything to console
- @Echo off - output only stdout\strerr

In PowerShell
- Default - output only stdout\strerr
- ???

Consider example with Hello world.

HelloWorld.cmd:
Echo Hello World

Output:
C:\>HelloWorld.cmd

C:\>Echo Hello world
Hello world

C:\>

HelloWorld.ps1
"Hello world"

Output:
PS C:\> .\HelloWorld.ps1
Hello world

In .cmd, I can change this behavior by using @Echo off\on. But how to change
it in powershell - I don't know

Martin

"sapienscripter" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:a25cf76794efcfd28645d2dee62b7ee7@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

The first change is to start thinking of PowerShell as object oriented. While there is a console, it does not behave (obviously) like the CMD shell. When you run a PowerShell command, objects are sent through the pipeline. At the end of pipeline are default cmdlets that take the remaining objects in the pipeline and present a text display.

I can't think of a way to mimic the echo off/echo on technique in PowerShell. There are cmdlets you can use to save output to a file like Out-File. You might also look at Tee-Object which saves output to a file and displays it to the console. However, none of these will also capture the actual command. For that you would need to use Start-Transcript. If you wanted a good log when running a script or function, I would add this cmdlet at the beginning to start logging and then turn it off at the end with Stop-Transcript.

Try this function and see if you like it.

function `@echo
([switch]$off){if($off){stop-transcript}else{start-transcript}}

# helloworld.ps1
`@echo
write-Host "Hello"
write-Host "World"
`@echo -off

This is not exactly the same, but should give you what you want.

"Martin Zugec" <martin.zugec@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uPYdUYQ3IHA.3508@xxxxxx

Hi Brandon,

first try that Hello world example Start-Transcript works fine - problem
I have is that PowerShell acts differently when it is running in interactive
session (do something, prompt, read prompt, do something, prompt, read
prompt) and something completely different when running from .ps1 file.

So transcript will only save stdout\strerr (which makes sense). I know it
sounds really really strange, but old cmd.exe was maybe more flexible here


Martin

"Brandon [MVP]" <tshell.mask@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7F072624-8B9C-4E65-AB5B-BDF07368125B@xxxxxx

Heya,

same reply as for Brandon - problem is not how to do it, its pretty fine
(either Start-Transcript or Tee-Object), problem is that when you run .ps1
script, there is (as far as I know) no way how to difine verbosity of that
script (stdin\strout or full). I am afraid this have nothing to do with
object-orientation of PowerShell.

Martin

"sapienscripter" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:55c88dba1fc41dfc1abe7aaf3e6da755@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

You are trying to impose essentially text based techniques on an object oriented shell and it won't work. At the interactive level, you'll need to use Start-Transcript. One thing I just discovered is that Echo is an alias for Write-Output.

The more I read this thread the more I'm not sure what you are really after. It seems that when using a script in PowerShell the transcript technique will meet your needs. Is that correct?

When it comes to the interactive shell I think you still have an issue. Can you give a more practical example of something you would do in the CMD shell that you are trying to recreate in PowerShell? Something other than "hello world".