PowerShell includes several common parameters that all cmdlets support.
Their short aliases are listed in (parentheses).
-Confirm Prompt the user for permission before performing any action that
modifies the system.[boolean] (cf)
-Confirm:$false or -Confirm:$true
-Debug Provide programming-level information about the operation [boolean] (db)
$true (-Debug:$true). Has the same effect as -Debug.
-ErrorAction Control command behavior when an error occurs [enum] (ea)
Valid values: Continue [default], Stop, Suspend, SilentlyContinue, Ignore, Inquire. [Enum]
e.g. -EA SilentlyContinue
The -SilentlyContinue option will cause any Throw statement to be completely ignored.
This can be mitigated by using Try/Catch or by adding a trap {} statement to trap the error.
-ErrorVariable Name of variable (in addition to $error) in which
to place objects to which an error has occurred [string] (ev)
-InformationAction
Override the value of the $InformationPreference preference variable. (ia)
Valid values: SilentlyContinue, Stop, Continue, Inquire, Ignore, Suspend
-InformationVariable [+]variable_name
Store into a variable a string that you specify with Write-Information.
PowerShell 5.0+
-OutBuffer The number of objects to buffer before calling the next
cmdlet in the pipeline.[Int32] (ob)
-OutVariable Name of variable in which to place output objects [string](ov)
(equivalent to piping the command Set-Variable -passthru true)
-PipelineVariable (pv)
Stores the value of the current pipeline element as a variable, for
any named command as it flows through the pipeline.
Valid values are strings, the same as for any variable names.
-Verbose Provide detailed information about the operation [boolean] (vb)
$true (-Verbose:$true) has the same effect as -Verbose.
$false (-Verbose:$false)
-WarningAction Determines how the cmdlet responds to a warning from the command.(wa)
This parameter works only when the command generates a warning message.
For example when a command contains the Write-Warning cmdlet.
-WarningAction:Continue
Display the warning messages and continues executing the command. Continue is the default.
-WarningAction:SilentlyContinue
Suppress the warning message and continue executing the command.
-WarningAction:Inquire
Display the warning message and prompts you for confirmation before continuing execution.
This value is rarely used.
-WarningAction:Stop
Display the warning message and stop executing the command.
The $WarningPreference variable allows the default action to be changed, it can be set to any of:
Continue, SilentlyContinue, Inquire, Stop
-WarningVariable
Stores warnings about the command in the specified variable. (wv)
All generated warnings are saved in the variable even if the
warnings are not displayed to the user.
To append the warnings to the variable content, instead of replacing
any warnings that might already be stored there, type a plus sign (+)
before the variable name. -WarningVariable +myvar
-WhatIf Explain what will happen if the command is executed, without actually
executing the command.[boolean] (wi)
-whatif:$false or -whatif:$true
-Write-Information
values are shown depending on the value of the -InformationAction
common parameter; if you do not add the -InformationAction common parameter,
Write-Information strings are shown depending on the value of the $InformationPreference
An Error Variable can be useful for logging errors as part of a pipeline process i.e. when only a few out of many items may fail:
PS C:> some-pscmdlet | foreach {
another-pscmdlet -options blah -errorvariable ErrFlag
if ($ErrFlag) { Echo "$_.name failed" }
}
The -confirm parameter allows dropping into the runtime command line while running a PowerShell scriptCmdlet:
The confirmation prompt is [Y] Yes [A] All [N] No [L] No to all [S] Suspend
choosing S will drop you at the command prompt where you can echo variables, make changes etc before typing EXIT to resume running the scriptCmdlet.
Other than where stated above, none of the common parameters have a defined default value, so they will evaluate as FALSE.
You can set a default value, for the duration of a script or a session using $PSDefaultParameterValues, for example you could set the value of WhatIf to TRUE at the start of a script and this will affect every cmdlet in the script
$PSDefaultParameterValues['*:WhatIf'] = $true
Some common parameters may have no effect in some cmdlets, this does not raise an error.
Aliases: -ErrorAction and -ErrorVariable, have defined parameter aliases so you can just type -EA and -EV
Examples
PS C:\> Del $somefile -ErrorVariable somevariable
Notice that the error variable is not prefixed with a $ here, using $somevariable will not work.
If the ErrorVariable name is prefixed with a + then PowerShell will ADD the errors to that variable:
PS C:\> Del $somefile -ErrorVariable +somevariable
PS C:\> $somevariable.count
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, What! You, too? I thought I was the only one” ~ C. S. Lewis
Related PowerShell Cmdlets:
Parameters - Command Line Parameters param() and $args[]
get-help - Open the help file, list parameters for a cmdlet.