Question

I’m having trouble understanding how Powershell treats functions. In the following script all functions are called, even if I never actually call the main function. Does powershell not have a concept of call chain?

param([string]$directory)

[string]$global:sqlscript;
$global:types = @{
"double" = "DOUBLE PRECISION"; 
"int" = "INTEGER"; 
"QString" = "INTEGER";
"Ignored" = "1";
"Normal" = "2";
"Critical" = "3" }

function resultToSql($element)
{
  $global:sqlscript += ('"')
  $global:sqlscript += ($element.name + '" ')
  $global:sqlscript += ($global:types.Get_Item($element.type))
  $global:sqlscript += (',' + [Environment]::Newline)
  $global:sqlscript += ('"' + $element.name + "_metric_group" + " " + $global:types.Get_Item($element.metric_group.type))   
  $global:sqlscript += (',' + [Environment]::Newline)
}

function xmlToSql($source)
{
  Write-Host "Parsing...";
  $global:sqlscript += "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS " + '"' + $source.spec.task.ToLower() + '"'+ [Environment]::NewLine
  $global:sqlscript += '"' + "id" + '"' + " SERIAL NOT NULL" + [Environment]::NewLine

  foreach ($node in $source.spec.measure) {
      resultToSql $node
  }

  foreach ($m in $source.spec.error) {
    resultToSql $m
  }

  $global:sqlscript += '"' + "weighted_sum" + '" ' + $global:types.Get_Item("double") + [Environment]::Newline;
}

function main
{
  if ($directory -eq $null) { exit }
  else
  {
    $xmlfiles = Get-ChildItem -Path $directory -include *Spec.xml
    foreach ($xmlfile in $xmlfiles)
    {
        Write-Host "Filename:" $xmlfile;
        [xml]$spec = Get-Content $file;
        xmlToSql $spec; 
        Write-Host $script;
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

Unlike a C/C++/C# program, “you” need to call the Main function – at the bottom of this script. When you run the script above all it does is create the functions you’ve defined. It doesn’t run any of them. You have to do that by calling them in the script and one of those calls has to be at the script level (outside any functions).