Question

I am creating a powershell module and following the Verb-Noun naming conventions for the functions that I exported.

e.g.

function Do-Something() {
    sleep 10
}

Importing the modules works as expected… BUT if I import that module as a custom object.

$myObject = Import-Module MyModule -AsCustomObject

Then try to access the function, I get a parse error:

PS > $myObject.Do-Something()
You must provide a value expression on the right-hand side of the '-' operator.
At line:1 char:22
+ $myObject.Do- <<<< Something()
    + CategoryInfo          : ParserError: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ExpectedValueExpression

I don’t understand. Does this mean that I can’t use the ‘-‘ in methods that belong to objects?
I have noticed that .NET objects and other PSObjects do not have ‘-‘ in their method names.
I haven’t figured out a way to escape it yet either… but even so, that would be messy.

Answer 1

Try this:
$myObject.”Do-Something”()