Powershell pitfalls

Question

What Powershell pitfalls you have fall into? :-)

Mine are:

# -----------------------------------
function foo()
{
    @(\"text\")
}

# Expected 1, a         


        

Answer 1

Another one I ran into recently: [string] parameters that accept pipeline input are not strongly typed in practice. You can pipe anything at all and PS will coerce it via ToString().

function Foo 
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [parameter(Mandatory=$True, ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
        [string] $param
    )

    process { $param }
}

get-process svchost | Foo

Unfortunately there is no way to turn this off. Best workaround I could think of:

function Bar
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [parameter(Mandatory=$True, ValueFromPipeline=$True)]
        [object] $param
    )

    process 
    { 
        if ($param -isnot [string]) {
            throw "Pass a string you fool!"
        }
        # rest of function goes here
    }
}

edit - a better workaround I've started using...

Add this to your custom type XML -

  
    System.String
    
      
        StringValue
        
          $this
        
      
    
  

Then write functions like this:

function Bar
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param (
        [parameter(Mandatory=$True, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$True)]
        [Alias("StringValue")]
        [string] $param
    )

    process 
    { 
        # rest of function goes here
    }
}