How To Use Try Catch With Set Location and ErrorActionPreference in Powershell

The aim of this page📝 is provide steps for a short cdf function that navigates to the selected folder in fzf even if you select a file. Selecting a file would end up in non terminating error as you need a container for the Set-Location command. But I want to change folders quickly anyway...

• try-catch block handles errors in PowerShell script.
• cd command is an alias for Set-Location cmdlet.
• Non-terminating errors generated by Set-Location are by default not caught by try-catch.
• $ErrorActionPreference variable controls how PowerShell responds to non-terminating errors.
• Set $ErrorActionPreference to 'Stop' to make non-terminating errors behave like terminating errors.

function cdf {
    try {
        $ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'
        Set-Location (fzf)
    }
    catch {
        Set-Location (Split-Path (fzf))
    }
    finally {
        $ErrorActionPreference = 'Continue'
    }
}

In this example, $ErrorActionPreference is set to 'Stop' before calling Set-Location. If Set-Location generates a non-terminating error, the error will be caught by the catch block and the second Set-Location statement will be executed. In the finally block, $ErrorActionPreference is reset to 'Continue'.