How to exit from ForEach-Object in PowerShell

Question

I have the following code:

$project.PropertyGroup | Foreach-Object {
    if($_.GetAttribute(\'Condition\').Trim() -eq $propertyGroupConditionName.Trim()) {
           


        

Answer 1

You have two options to abruptly exit out of ForEach-Object pipeline in PowerShell:

1. Apply exit logic in Where-Object first, then pass objects to Foreach-Object, or
2. (where possible) convert Foreach-Object into a standard Foreach looping construct.

Let's see examples: Following scripts exit out of Foreach-Object loop after 2nd iteration (i.e. pipeline iterates only 2 times)":

Solution-1: use Where-Object filter BEFORE Foreach-Object:

[boolean]$exit = $false;
1..10 | Where-Object {$exit -eq $false} | Foreach-Object {
     if($_ -eq 2) {$exit = $true}    #OR $exit = ($_ -eq 2);
     $_;
}

OR

1..10 | Where-Object {$_ -le 2} | Foreach-Object {
     $_;
}

Solution-2: Converted Foreach-Object into standard Foreach looping construct:

Foreach ($i in 1..10) { 
     if ($i -eq 3) {break;}
     $i;
}

PowerShell should really provide a bit more straightforward way to exit or break out from within the body of a Foreach-Object pipeline. Note: return doesn't exit, it only skips specific iteration (similar to continue in most programming languages), here is an example of return:

Write-Host "Following will only skip one iteration (actually iterates all 10 times)";
1..10 | Foreach-Object {
     if ($_ -eq 3) {return;}  #skips only 3rd iteration.
     $_;
}

HTH