Question

I have some PowerShell scripts that accept many long parameters, like,

myScript.ps1 -completePathToFile "C:\...\...\...\file.txt" -completePathForOutput "C:\...\...\...\output.log" -recipients ("[e-mail]") -etc.

I can’t seem to make PowerShell run such scripts unless all the parameters are on a single line. Is there a way to invoke the script more like this?

myScript.ps1
  -completePathToFile "C:\...\...\...\file.txt"
  -completePathForOutput "C:\...\...\...\output.log"
  -recipients (
    "[e-mail]",
    "[e-mail]"
   )
  -etc

The lack of readability is driving me nuts, but the scripts really do need to be this parametric.

Answer 1

PowerShell thinks the command is complete at the end of the line unless it sees certain characters like a pipe, open paren or open curly. Just put a line continuation character “ ` at the end of each line but make sure there are no spaces after that continuation character:

myScript.ps1 `
  -completePathToFile "C:\...\...\...\file.txt" `
  -completePathForOutput "C:\...\...\...\output.log" `
  -recipients (
    "[e-mail]", `
    "[e-mail]" `
   ) 

If you’re on PowerShell 2.0 you can also put those parameters in a hashtable and use splatting e.g:

$parms = @{
    CompletePathToFile   = 'C:\...\...\...\file.txt'
    CompletPathForOutput = 'C:\...\...\...\output.log'
    Recipients           = '[e-mail]','[e-mail]'
}
myScript.ps1 @parms