How to split long commands over multiple lines in PowerShell

Question

How do you take a command like the following in PowerShell and split it across multiple lines    amp  C  Program Files IIS Microsoft Web Deploy msdeploy exe  -verb sync -source contentPath  c  workspace xxx master Build  PublishedWebsites xxx Web  -dest contentPath  c  websites xxx wwwroot  computerName 192 168 1 1 username administrator password xxx

User · Answer

If you have a function      function foo     Invoke       bar     directory     true     If you have a cmdlet    PSCustomObject       Path     bar    Type     directory    Force    true     New-Item   If you have an application    foo exe  Args      Invoke       bar     directory     true     Or  icm  foo exe  Args  -Args       bar     directory     true

User · Answer

Ah  and if you have a very long string that you want to break up  say of HTML  you can do it by putting a   on each side of the outer   - like this    mystring      Bob went to town to buy a fat pig       You get exactly this   Bob went to town to buy a fat pig    And if you are using Notepad    it will even highlight correctly as a string block   Now  if you wanted that string to contain double quotes  too  just add them in  like this    myvar    Site   mystring       lt a href  http   somewhere com somelocation  gt  Bob s  myvar  lt  a gt       You would get exactly this    lt a href  http   somewhere com somelocation  gt  Bob s Site  lt  a gt    However  if you use double-quotes in that  -string like that  Notepad   doesn t realize that and will switch out the syntax colouring as if it were not quoted or quoted  depending on the case   And what s better is this  anywhere you insert a  variable  it DOES get interpreted   If you need the dollar sign in the text  you escape it with a tick mark like this     not-a-variable     NOTICE  If you don t put the final    at the very start of the line  it will fail  It took me an hour to figure out that I could not indent that in my code   Here is MSDN on the subject  Using Windows PowerShell    Here-Strings

User · Answer

Another way to break a string across multiple lines is to put an empty expression in the middle of the string  and break it across lines   sample string    stackoverflow stackoverflow stackoverflow stackoverflow stackoverflow   broken across lines    stackoverflow stackoverflow     stackoverflow stack    overflow stackoverflow

User · Answer

You can use the backtick operator    amp   C  Program Files IIS Microsoft Web Deploy msdeploy exe        -verb sync       -source contentPath  c  workspace xxx master Build  PublishedWebsites xxx Web        -dest contentPath  c  websites xxx wwwroot  computerName 192 168 1 1 username administrator password xxx    That s still a little too long for my taste  so I d use some well-named variables    msdeployPath    C  Program Files IIS Microsoft Web Deploy msdeploy exe   verbArg    -verb sync   sourceArg    -source contentPath  c  workspace xxx master Build  PublishedWebsites xxx Web    destArg    -dest contentPath  c  websites xxx wwwroot  computerName 192 168 1 1 username administrator password xxx     amp   msdeployPath  verbArg  sourceArg  destArg

User · Answer

Another method for cleaner argument passing would be splatting   Define your parameters and values as a hashtable like this     params       class     Win32 BIOS                 computername   SERVER-R2                 filter   drivetype 3                 credential   Administrator      And then call your commandlet like this   Get-WmiObject  params   Microsoft Docs  About Splatting  TechNet Magazine 2011  Windows PowerShell  Splatting  Looks like it works with Powershell 2 0 and up

User · Answer

Splat Method with Calculations  If you choose splat method  beware calculations that are made using other parameters   In practice  sometimes I have to set variables first then create the hash table   Also  the format doesn t require single quotes around the key value or the semi-colon  as mentioned above    Example of a call to a function that creates an Excel spreadsheet   title    Cut-off File Processing on  start date long str   title row   1  header row   2  data row start   3  data row end      data row start      file info array Count  - 1     use parameter hash table to make code more readable  params          title    title     title row    title row     header row    header row     data row start    data row start     data row end    data row end    xl wksht   Create-Excel-Spreadsheet  params   Note  The file array contains information that will affect how the spreadsheet is populated

User · Answer

In PowerShell 5 and PowerShell 5 ISE  it is also possible to use just Shift   Enter for multiline editing  instead of standard backticks   at the end of each line    PS gt   amp  C  Program Files IIS Microsoft Web Deploy msdeploy exe    Shift Enter  gt  gt  gt  -verb sync   Shift Enter  gt  gt  gt  -source contentPath  c  workspace xxx master Build  PublishedWebsites xxx Web    Shift Enter  gt  gt  gt  -dest contentPath  c  websites xxx wwwroot computerName 192 168 1 1 username administrator password xxx

User · Answer

Trailing backtick character  i e     amp  C  Program Files IIS Microsoft Web Deploy msdeploy exe    -verb sync   -source contentPath  c  workspace xxx master Build  PublishedWebsites xxx Web    -dest contentPath  c  websites xxx wwwroot computerName 192 168 1 1 username administrator password xxx    White space matters  The required format is Space Enter

[powershell] How to split long commands over multiple lines in PowerShell

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