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

Using the information from user1654962, here is the way that I worked around this PowerShell issue. Since, if there is output information, PowerShell will return it as an array, I decided to make sure the function output was always an array. Then the calling line can use [-1] to get the last element of the array and we'll get a consistent return value.

function DoSomething()
{
  # Code that could create output
  Write-Output "Random output that we don't need to return"
  Write-Output "More random output"

  # Create the return value. It can be a string, object, etc.
  $MyReturnString = "ImportantValue"

  # Other code

  # Make sure the return value is an array by preceding it with a comma
  return ,$MyReturnString
}

$CleanReturnValue = ( DoSomething() )[-1]