3 Approaches to Powershell Multiliners — Backticks, Splatting, and Natural Line Continuators

usecase

• the question is that of an elegant interaction, i.e. not having to write long commands in a single line
• the answer is don’t use backticks unless splitting arguments, try splatting and rely on natural line continuators like a pipeline operator or scriptblock operator (and many others)

1. backtick

• a cmdlet ` Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir -Filter *.dll -Recurse` can be made a little more readable by breaking up long lines with PowerShell’s escape character:
• backtick is the escape character in powershell

PS C:\> Get-ChildItem `
  -Path $env:windir `
  -Filter *.dll `
  -Recurse

In general, the community feels you should avoid using those backticks as “line continuation characters” when possible.

— Readability · PowerShell Practice and Style

• hard to read
• easy to miss
• easy to mistype

1.1. when to use backtick

• when needing to split line into several cmdlet arguments
• not piping
• not using script blocks
• …but say copying the content of an entire folder (files and subfolders)
• this is just for the “personal hygiene”, not communicating with another person (this is not code, this is an interactive shell where I just communicate with myself)

PS C:\Users\Admin> copy -Path .\source\repos\dataIntoArray\ `
>> -Destination .\Documents\workspace\c#\dataIntoArray\ `
>> -Recurse `
>> -Force `
>> -Verbose

2. splatting

• splatting means passing parameters bound via a hash table to command with @ operator

$GetWmiObjectParams = @{
    Class = "Win32_LogicalDisk"
    Filter = "DriveType=3"
    ComputerName = "SERVER2"
}
Get-WmiObject @GetWmiObjectParams

3. natural line continuation

These are parts of the PowerShell language that naturally allow you to continue on to the next line without any special character or consideration.

— Bye Bye Backtick: Natural Line Continuations in PowerShell

• highly compatible with K&R indentation / 1TBS
• in the following, I am utilizing SCRIPTBLOCK OPERATOR {} and PIPELINE OPERATOR |

PS C:\Users\Admin\Downloads> dir |
>> sort LastWriteTime -Descending |
>> select -First 3 |
>> % {
>> mi $_.FullName "C:\Users\Admin\Documents\Zoom\2185596"
>> }

• I am just copying the last 3 downloaded files into its ticket-folder

4. sources

• Bye Bye Backtick: Natural Line Continuations in PowerShell
• Readability · PowerShell Practice and Style