Vista - Help with stderr from native console application

I’m trying to process the results of a native windows console application.
The application returns some xml in stdout if successful, or an error to
stderr if not. Ultimately, I would like a script that returns an [xml]
object, or a single error depending upon whether the console application
succeeded or not.

I have gotten as far as: [xml] [string]::join("`n", ( svn info --xml ))

Which works great if svn.exe succeeds, but not so great if it fails. If it
fails I get the following output:
svn: '.' is not a working copy
Cannot convert value "<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<info>" to type "System.Xml.XmlDocument". Error: "Unexpected end of file has
occurred. The following elements are not closed: info. Line 2, position 7."
At line:1 char:21
+ [xml] [string]::join( <<<< "`n", ( svn info --xml ))

The second error occurs because even when svn fails, it outputs invalid xml.
What I really want is a single error “svn: '.' is not a working copy�

I have tried varying combinations of $ErrorActionPreference, and
invoke-expression with –ErrorAction to no avail. I think the root of the
problem is that I don’t understand how stderr is handled in PowerShell.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,

- Michael

"Michael Lynch" <adoptableCoho@community.nospam> wrote in message
news:C3A9689A-BDE7-4CAF-9B74-F7DF74160679@microsoft.com...
> I’m trying to process the results of a native windows console application.
> The application returns some xml in stdout if successful, or an error to
> stderr if not. Ultimately, I would like a script that returns an [xml]
> object, or a single error depending upon whether the console application
> succeeded or not.
>
> I have gotten as far as: [xml] [string]::join("`n", ( svn info --xml ))

Try this:

[xml] [string]::join("`n", ( svn info --xml 2>$null ))

or if you want to capture the errors

[xml] [string]::join("`n", ( svn info --xml 2>SvnStderr.txt ))

This will redirect stderr to somewhere else besides the regular output. You
can look at $LastExitCode to make sure that Svn worked that is, if the type
cast to XML doesn't already error.

--
Keith