Question

I want to use Powershell in order to call a batch file on remote machines. This batch file has arguments. Here’s what I have so far:

$script = "\\fileshare\script.cmd"
$server = $args[0]
$args [string]::join(',',$args[1 .. ($args.count-1)])

Invoke-Command -computername $server {$script + ' ' + $args}

After a bit of searching, I found that the Invoke-Command function runs its scriptblock in a whole new process, so you can’t put variables in it (they won’t get expanded). That’s what the -ArgumentList tag is for. So I tried this instead…

Invoke-Command -computername $server {\\fileshare\script.cmd} -ArgumentList "FirstArgument"

That didn’t work either… my batch script tells me it’s not being passed any arguments. I can’t find anything that explicitly says so, but it looks like the -ArgumentList parameter only works on Powershell scripts (it won’t feed them to a batch script).

Any ideas how I can use Invoke-Command to call a batch file with arguments?

Answer 1

When you pass the argument list to the scriptblock, try to “receive them” using a PARAM directive. Like this:

Invoke-Command -computername $server {PARAM($myArg) \\fileshare\script.cmd $myArg} -ArgumentList "FirstArgument"

or you can just use the $args automatic variable:

Invoke-Command -computername $server {\\fileshare\script.cmd $args} -ArgumentList "FirstArgument"