How do you do a Pause with PowerShell 2 0

Question

OK  I m losing it  PowerShell is annoying me  I d like a pause dialog to appear  and it won t   PS W   gt  gt  gt   host UI RawUI ReadKey  NoEcho IncludeKeyDown   Exception calling  ReadKey  with  1  argument s    The method or operation is not implemented   At line 1 char 23    host UI RawUI ReadKey  lt  lt  lt  lt    NoEcho         CategoryInfo            NotSpecified          MethodInvocationException       FullyQualifiedErrorId   DotNetMethodException

User · Answer

The solutions like cmd  c pause cause a new command interpreter to start and run in the background  Although acceptable in some cases  this isn t really ideal   The solutions using Read-Host force the user to press Enter and are not really  any key    This solution will give you a true  press any key to continue  interface and will not start a new interpreter  which will essentially mimic the original pause command   Write-Host  Press any key to continue      void  System Console   ReadKey  true

User · Answer

cmd  c pause   out-null    It is not the PowerShell way  but it s so much more elegant    Save trees  Use one-liners

User · Answer

In addition to Michael Sorens  answer    lt 6  ReadKey in a new process  Start-Process PowerShell   void  System Console   ReadKey  true   -Wait -NoNewWindow    Advantage  Accepts any key but properly excludes Shift  Alt  Ctrl modifier keys   Advantage  Works in PS-ISE

User · Answer

You may want to use FlushInputBuffer to discard any characters mistakenly typed into the console  especially for long running operations  before using ReadKey  Write-Host -NoNewLine  Press any key to continue      Host UI RawUI FlushInputBuffer    Host UI RawUI ReadKey  NoEcho IncludeKeyDown     Out-Null

User · Answer

I think it is worthwhile to recap summarize the choices here for clarity    then offer a new variation that I believe provides the best utility    lt 1  ReadKey  System Console   write-host  Press any key to continue      void  System Console   ReadKey  true     Advantage  Accepts any key but properly excludes Shift  Alt  Ctrl modifier keys  Disadvantage  Does not work in PS-ISE     lt 2  ReadKey  RawUI   Write-Host  Press any key to continue       x    host UI RawUI ReadKey  NoEcho IncludeKeyDown      Disadvantage  Does not work in PS-ISE  Disadvantage  Does not exclude modifier keys     lt 3  cmd  cmd  c Pause   Out-Null    Disadvantage  Does not work in PS-ISE  Disadvantage  Visibly launches new shell window on first use  not noticeable on subsequent use but still has the overhead    lt 4  Read-Host  Read-Host -Prompt  Press Enter to continue     Advantage  Works in PS-ISE  Disadvantage  Accepts only Enter key     lt 5  ReadKey composite  This is a composite of  lt 1  above with the ISE workaround kludge extracted from the proposal on Adam s Tech Blog  courtesy of Nick from earlier comments on this page   I made two slight improvements to the latter  added Test-Path to avoid an error if you use Set-StrictMode  you do  don t you    and the final Write-Host to add a newline after your keystroke to put the prompt in the right place   Function Pause   Message    Press any key to continue                if   Test-Path variable psISE  -and  psISE             Shell   New-Object -ComObject  WScript Shell           Button    Shell Popup  Click OK to continue    0   Script Paused   0            else                Write-Host -NoNewline  Message          void  System Console   ReadKey  true          Write-Host            Advantage  Accepts any key but properly excludes Shift  Alt  Ctrl modifier keys  Advantage  Works in PS-ISE  though only with Enter or mouse click  Disadvantage  Not a one-liner

User · Answer

I assume that you want to read input from the console  If so  use Read-Host

[powershell] How do you do a ‘Pause’ with PowerShell 2.0?

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