Question

I have a simple powershell script that gets ran daily to compress and move some log files. How can i test that the command completes successfully before deleting the original log file.

set-location $logpath1
& $arcprg $pram $dest_file $source_file
Move-Item $dest_file $arcdir

If the Move-Item completes ok i want to remove-item $source_file

Answer 1

The completion status of the previous command can be accessed via the special variable $?.

Note that this works best with non-terminating errors (like you would get from Move-Item). Terminating errors are the result of a direct throw or an exception getting thrown in .NET and they alter the flow of your code. Best to use a trap or try/catch statement to observe those type of errors.

One other thing to watch out for WRT $? and console exes is that PowerShell assumes an exit code of 0 means success (i.e. $? is set to $true) and anything else means failure ($? set to $false). Unfortunately not all console exe’s observe that exit code convention e.g. there may be multiple success codes and a single failure code (0). For those exes that don’t follow the exit code rules, use $LastExitCode as pointed out in the comments to determine success or failure.