As a very long time PowerShell fan, I've always been impressed with the way PowerShell displays errors that occur in scripts or at the command line. PowerShell users are well-acquainted with the "Wall of Red Ink, as I call it:
But once you get over the visual shock and start to actually READ the error message, you begin to appreciate how good these error message actually are. They tell you what the error is and where it happened. I have long evangelised how good these messages are, once you learn to read them. B
But that is not to say things can't be improved. And indeed, in PowerShell 7, you'll find some nice improvements. NB: This blog post is being written using the latest build of the day. By the time PowerShell 7 ships, things may look the same - or different. As an aside, the daily build of PowerShell 7 in incredibly stable - hats off to the engineering team for managing that!
So in PowerShell 7, we have a new built-in variable and a new way of displaying errors. The Variable is $ErrorView which holds an object of the type: System.Management.Automation.ErrorView. This variable can hold one of three values: NormalView, CategoryView, ConciseView. With PowerShell 7, any time an error message is to be displayed, you see different views based on the value of $ErrorView.
A value of 'NormalView' results in the traditional display. But the new default setting, ConciseView, results in just the error message itself, like this:
For day to day use, ConciseView is awesome. BUT, I hear you say, where's all that detail gone. Do you HAVE to use the $Error error record collection? NO - there's now a cmdlet for that: Get-Error.
With Get-Error you get ALL the error information inside each error record all expanded out nicely. ALL the information without having to expand error records to get to the exception details, etc.
This new feature allows you to limit the Wall of Red Ink to a Line Of Red Ink, and get the error information when you need more details.
What a great new feature!
But once you get over the visual shock and start to actually READ the error message, you begin to appreciate how good these error message actually are. They tell you what the error is and where it happened. I have long evangelised how good these messages are, once you learn to read them. B
But that is not to say things can't be improved. And indeed, in PowerShell 7, you'll find some nice improvements. NB: This blog post is being written using the latest build of the day. By the time PowerShell 7 ships, things may look the same - or different. As an aside, the daily build of PowerShell 7 in incredibly stable - hats off to the engineering team for managing that!
So in PowerShell 7, we have a new built-in variable and a new way of displaying errors. The Variable is $ErrorView which holds an object of the type: System.Management.Automation.ErrorView. This variable can hold one of three values: NormalView, CategoryView, ConciseView. With PowerShell 7, any time an error message is to be displayed, you see different views based on the value of $ErrorView.
A value of 'NormalView' results in the traditional display. But the new default setting, ConciseView, results in just the error message itself, like this:
For day to day use, ConciseView is awesome. BUT, I hear you say, where's all that detail gone. Do you HAVE to use the $Error error record collection? NO - there's now a cmdlet for that: Get-Error.
With Get-Error you get ALL the error information inside each error record all expanded out nicely. ALL the information without having to expand error records to get to the exception details, etc.
This new feature allows you to limit the Wall of Red Ink to a Line Of Red Ink, and get the error information when you need more details.
What a great new feature!
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