Question

I want to do a Try Catch on an .exe in Powershell, what I have looks like this:

Try
{
    $output = C:\psftp.exe ftp.blah.com 2>&1
}
Catch
{
    echo "ERROR: "
    echo $output
    return
}

echo "DONE: "
echo $output

When I use say an invalid domain, it returns an error like psftp.exe : Fatal: Network error: Connection refused but my code is not catching that.

How would I catch errors?

Answer 1

try / catch in PowerShell doesn’t work with native executables. After you make the call to psftp.exe, check the automatic variable $LastExitCode. That will contain psftp’s exit code e.g.:

$output = C:\psftp.exe ftp.blah.com 2>&1
if ($LastExitCode -ne 0)
{
    echo "ERROR: "
    echo $output
    return
}

The script above presumes that the exe returns 0 on success and non-zero otherwise. If that is not the case, adjust the if (...) condition accordingly.