Vista - redirect write-host

How do I redirect the output of a script that uses write-host?
Ie I have a script Foo.ps1

write-host Hello

and I have tried

Foo > foo.log
Foo | tee foo.log

If I change the write-host to write-output, then I can redirect the output,
but then when I use the tee, the output does not appear on the console until
the script completes (I have a long running script and I want to see the
progress of the script displayed immediately on the console)

Rgds
Douglas Woods

Try to play with Start-Transcript, perhaps it is what you want (more or
less).

--
Thanks,
Roman Kuzmin

Thanks, a new command for me :-) Yes that does do the job, but would still
oike to know if it is possible to redirect output from write-host.
--
Douglas Woods


"Roman Kuzmin" wrote:

> Try to play with Start-Transcript, perhaps it is what you want (more or
> less).
>
> --
> Thanks,
> Roman Kuzmin
>
>
>

I dont believe you can redirect write-host... use write-output instead.

Why do you want to use write-host? If it is because of the color/layout... I
would suggest making a function that takes input and pipes it to write-host
and write-output or you could just do both like this

write-host "hello";write-output "hello" | out-file testme.txt

"DouglasWoods" <DouglasWoods@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:70012569-B8F5-4ABC-A09D-72D4CBE9E097@microsoft.com...
> Thanks, a new command for me :-) Yes that does do the job, but would still
> oike to know if it is possible to redirect output from write-host.
> --
> Douglas Woods
>
>
> "Roman Kuzmin" wrote:
>
>> Try to play with Start-Transcript, perhaps it is what you want (more or
>> less).
>>
>> --
>> Thanks,
>> Roman Kuzmin
>>
>>
>>

"DouglasWoods" <DouglasWoods@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:70012569-B8F5-4ABC-A09D-72D4CBE9E097@microsoft.com...
> Thanks, a new command for me :-) Yes that does do the job, but would still
> oike to know if it is possible to redirect output from write-host.

I don't know of a way but I need this capability too. When we used Korn
shell we used a construct like this:

exec 2>&1 foo.log

After that *everything* gets redirected to foo.log. In PowerShell almost
every interesting line has this appended to it:

>> foo.log

That makes the script very noisy and hard to read. Before anybody says well
why don' t you just redirect to foo.log when you run the file. That doesn't
seem very well encapsulated to me. For years we've written our scripts to
generate their own log files generally named the same thing as the script
but with a .log extension rather than .ksh. What I would love to see is a
similar facility to Korn shell's exec 2>&1. In fact, I would like to hook
all output to the host so I can redirect it to a log file even output from
cmdlets like Write-Host/Warning/Error.

--
Keith

Keith, 2>&1 just redirects stderr and stdout. I think the problem here is
that write-host doesn't output to stdout.

I have seen some apps (sysinternals ones if I recall) that cannot be
redirected either. This may just be a Windows thing. I discussed this with
/\/\0\/\/ awhile back and I think our solution was a function that
encapsulates all the write-x and use it.

Im not at work so I dont have it handy, but something like

function write-stuff {
param($msg,$output,$log,[switch]$both)
if($output -eq "host")
{
Write-Host $msg
}
if($output -eq "out")
{
Write-Output $msg
}
if($log)
{
$msg | out-file $log -enc ASCII -append
}
if($both)
{
Write-Host $msg
Write-Output $msg
}
}

I wrote this on the bus so no testing, but I think you get my drift.

p.s. I, like yourself, would like to see this functionality native, but I
think I can see why they did it and I decided to use this workaround.

"Keith Hill" <r_keith_hill@mailhot.nospamIdotcom> wrote in message
news:FDCD75BA-CEA9-41BA-AB3D-202EE109D370@microsoft.com...
> "DouglasWoods" <DouglasWoods@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:70012569-B8F5-4ABC-A09D-72D4CBE9E097@microsoft.com...
>> Thanks, a new command for me :-) Yes that does do the job, but would
>> still
>> oike to know if it is possible to redirect output from write-host.
>
> I don't know of a way but I need this capability too. When we used Korn
> shell we used a construct like this:
>
> exec 2>&1 foo.log
>
> After that *everything* gets redirected to foo.log. In PowerShell almost
> every interesting line has this appended to it:
>
>>> foo.log
>
> That makes the script very noisy and hard to read. Before anybody says
> well why don' t you just redirect to foo.log when you run the file. That
> doesn't seem very well encapsulated to me. For years we've written our
> scripts to generate their own log files generally named the same thing as
> the script but with a .log extension rather than .ksh. What I would love
> to see is a similar facility to Korn shell's exec 2>&1. In fact, I would
> like to hook all output to the host so I can redirect it to a log file
> even output from cmdlets like Write-Host/Warning/Error.
>
> --
> Keith

"Brandon Shell" <tshell.mask@mk.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23XNUaMahHHA.4140@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Keith, 2>&1 just redirects stderr and stdout. I think the problem here is
> that write-host doesn't output to stdout.

In Korn shell "exec 2>&1 foo.log" redirects *everything* to foo.log. Of
course, there is only stdout and stderr in Korn shell to redirect. Still,
this is a very convenient construct to have and one I would like to see in
PowerShell and extended to capture all host output.

> p.s. I, like yourself, would like to see this functionality native, but I
> think I can see why they did it and I decided to use this workaround.

I imagine it was just one of those things that wasn't deemed necessary for a
v1.0 release (which I agree with). Let's hope they can get this in the next
release.

--
Keith

another tip Write-Error gets logged in $error also, you can check it (or
dumpt to file ) after the script has runned

PoSH> Write-Error 'foo'
Write-Error 'foo' : foo

PoSH> $Error
Write-Error 'foo' : foo

not exactly what was asked can be handy also in this case

Greetings /\/\o\/\/


"Keith Hill" <r_keith_hill@mailhot.nospamIdotcom> wrote in message
news:A19D5ECF-42EF-439C-B026-59964EC08C62@microsoft.com...
> "Brandon Shell" <tshell.mask@mk.gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:%23XNUaMahHHA.4140@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Keith, 2>&1 just redirects stderr and stdout. I think the problem here is
>> that write-host doesn't output to stdout.
>
> In Korn shell "exec 2>&1 foo.log" redirects *everything* to foo.log. Of
> course, there is only stdout and stderr in Korn shell to redirect. Still,
> this is a very convenient construct to have and one I would like to see in
> PowerShell and extended to capture all host output.
>
>> p.s. I, like yourself, would like to see this functionality native, but I
>> think I can see why they did it and I decided to use this workaround.
>
> I imagine it was just one of those things that wasn't deemed necessary for
> a v1.0 release (which I agree with). Let's hope they can get this in the
> next release.
>
> --
> Keith

"/\/\o\/\/ [MVP]" <mow001@hotmail.NoSpam> wrote in message
news:B6C85496-ABE3-4DCD-B68C-C3A073A154C7@microsoft.com...
> another tip Write-Error gets logged in $error also, you can check it (or
> dumpt to file ) after the script has runned
>
> PoSH> Write-Error 'foo'
> Write-Error 'foo' : foo
>
> PoSH> $Error
> Write-Error 'foo' : foo
>
> not exactly what was asked can be handy also in this case

Hi Mow, since $Error is a global wouldn't it contain error information from
other stuff besides just the execution of a particular script i.e. like
errors you encountered before you ran the script?

--
Keith

I have some functions that, when I use Write-Host, the function no
longer outputs naked text. In other functions, the problem does not
occur. I'd love to get to the bottom of this. I'm aware of Write-
Error and Write-Warning, but Write-Host is so much better, because it
only writes what you tell it to write, in exactly the color you
specify. And I like to use green for the final success.

Thanks,
Mike