Output Issue with Transcript in Powershell

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, there is a "bug" in the current version of Powershell with the Transcript.  For "external" commands, (that is programs that aren't Powershell commands) the transcript will log the input but not output.  I first encountered this when I started calling "Robocopy" instead of "Copy-Item" because of the speed and features Robocopy provides over the native "copy-item" command.

My work around is very simple.  I need to capture the output anyway to determine if there is an error.  So I assign the output stream from Robocopy to a variable and then simply use "Write-Output" to display it in the stream.  The drawback is that the interactive user is going to have to wait until the command has completed to see the output - but again, I need to parse the output for errors - so not much I can do about that.

 Here's my code snippet:

using Robocopy for speed and more power with exlusion

"copying files with robocopy with the following command: $exec"

$exec="robocopy $sourcePath $destPath /XD _config* Deploy /s"

$out = Invoke-Expression  $exec

#write the log to stream

Write-Output $out

#check if there was an error

$fail = $out -match "ERROR :"

if ($fail)

{

      throw("Failure in deploying ProcessLauncher Files")

}

Another solution was provided by a reader to the blog Seb from New Zealand (thanks for reading Zeb!) which he got from the Microsoft Powershell Newsgroup:  which is to use:

Function Fix-Transcript ()
{
Process{
Write-Host $_
}
}

ipconfig | Fix-Transcript

Stop-Transcript

While it’s a little “noisier” I think I prefer the Write-Output as I think it is a little clearer what’s happening.