Text Output Is Not a Contract

re: Text Output Is Not a Contract

Don Jones — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:59:52 GMT

Your own scripts shouldn't output text as a contract, either - for many of the same reasons, and because PowerShell (being object-oriented) will do a lot of work with you if you aren't sitting around munging text. See http://concentratedtech.com/content/?p=139 - have your scripts output objects.

re: Text Output Is Not a Contract

karl prosser — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:36:07 GMT

nice idea, but you are taking objects then returning an array of strings to the pipeline.. sure it looks pretty , but its not useful.. either write-host text, or present useful objects.

re: Text Output Is Not a Contract

Hal Rottenberg — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:28:25 GMT

I've been using a script which expands this sort of thing out for a long time now. Check out this output:

§ ATLLAPHROTTENBE {~} Get-Parameter Get-Command | ft -autosize

Name Type ParameterSet IsMandatory Pipeline

---- ---- ------------ ----------- --------

Verb String[] CmdletSet False False

Noun String[] CmdletSet False False

PSSnapin String[] CmdletSet False False

TotalCount Int32 CmdletSet False False

Syntax Boolean CmdletSet False False

ArgumentList Object[] CmdletSet False False

Name String[] AllCommandSet False True

CommandType CommandTypes AllCommandSet False False

TotalCount Int32 AllCommandSet False False

Syntax Boolean AllCommandSet False False

ArgumentList Object[] AllCommandSet False False

You can find the latest version of this script on PoshCode: http://poshcode.org/?lang=&q=get-parameter

re: Text Output Is Not a Contract

Blair Sutton — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 06:21:21 GMT

The problem with Powershell over Perl is bad performance when dealing with 100,000+ objects. Dealing with 100,000+ text lines is a lot faster in Perl/Bash or whatever. So I would have to say Yes you have many improvements to make! (Otherwise very useful for tasks requiring smaller data sets)

"We reserve the right to radically change our text rendering to improve our customer experience. (God knows we have some improvements to make. :-) )"

re: Text Output Is Not a Contract

PowerShellTeam — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:06:39 GMT

@Blair.

We are doing quite a bit of work on perf in V2 particularly for startup times and text parsing. Don't give up on us and try it again when we have V2 out. You'll see some improvements in our CTP3 out later this year.

jps