Clear captured output/return value in a Powershell function

Question

Is there a way to clear the return values inside of a function so I can guarantee that the return value is what I intend? Or maybe turn off this behaviour for the function?<

Answer 1

I ran into the same issue. In PS a function would return all output pipe information. It gets tricky to | Out-Null rest of the code in the function. I worked around this by passing return variable as a reference parameter [ref] . This works consistently. Check the sample code below. Note: some of the syntax is important to avoid errors. e.g. parameter has to be passed in brackets ([ref]$result)

function DoSomethingWithFile( [ref]$result, [string]$file )
{
    # Other code writing to output
    # ....

    # Initialize result
    if (Test-Path $file){
        $result.value = $true
    } else {
        $result.value = $false
    }
}
$result = $null
DoSomethingWithFile ([ref]$result) "C:\test.txt"