Question

I have a powershell script that gives some status output via write-output. I am intentionally not using write-host because the output may be captured and written to a logfile like this:

./myscript.ps1 | out-file log.txt

But if the output is not redirected it would be nice to have colored output on the console, because the script is producing a lot of different status messages. I know that colored output is possible with write-host but the status messages should be pipeable.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Answer 1

I have tried this extra function and it basically works fine:

function Write-ColorOutput($ForegroundColor)
{
    # save the current color
    $fc = $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor

    # set the new color
    $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $ForegroundColor

    # output
    if ($args) {
        Write-Output $args
    }
    else {
        $input | Write-Output
    }

    # restore the original color
    $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $fc
}

# test
Write-ColorOutput red (ls)
Write-ColorOutput green (ls)
ls | Write-ColorOutput yellow

The result of this particular test is a little bit funny though: we really get lines in red, green and yellow but the table header is in red, i.e. the color of the the first call of the function.