Book Image

Mastering PowerShell Scripting - Fourth Edition

By : Chris Dent
5 (1)
Book Image

Mastering PowerShell Scripting - Fourth Edition

5 (1)
By: Chris Dent

Overview of this book

PowerShell scripts offer a convenient way to automate various tasks, but working with them can be daunting. Mastering PowerShell Scripting takes away the fear and helps you navigate through PowerShell's capabilities.This extensively revised edition includes new chapters on debugging and troubleshooting and creating GUIs (online chapter). Learn the new features of PowerShell 7.1 by working with parameters, objects, and .NET classes from within PowerShell 7.1. This comprehensive guide starts with the basics before moving on to advanced topics, including asynchronous processing, desired state configuration, using more complex scripts and filters, debugging issues, and error-handling techniques. Explore how to efficiently manage substantial amounts of data and interact with other services using PowerShell 7.1. This book will help you to make the most of PowerShell's automation features, using different methods to parse data, manipulate regular expressions, and work with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
24
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25
Index

Debugging and Troubleshooting

Debugging is the art of discovering, isolating, and fixing bugs in code. The complexity of debugging increases with the complexity of the code.

To a degree, the need to debug complex scripts can be reduced by adopting certain development strategies:

  • Scripts should be broken down into discreet units by using functions
  • Each unit of code should strive to excel at one thing only
  • Each unit of code should strive to be as short as it can reasonably be without sacrificing clarity
  • Tests should be developed to ensure that each unit of code acts as it should
  • Use commands such as Write-Verbose or Write-Debug to write identifiable messages, perhaps including values of variables

Debugging is an inevitable part of the development process. Fortunately, the debugger itself is not difficult to use.

This chapter explores the following topics:

  • Common problems
  • Debugging in the console
  • Debugging...