How do I prevent Powershell from closing after completion of a script?

Question

Disclaimer : I am the epitome of a scipting/Powershell rookie, so please bear with me.

I\'ve written a script to return the Active Directory username of any

Answer 1

Method 2 from the linked post - i.e., waiting for the user to press a key before exiting the script - can be used, but it requires additional effort:

End your script as follows in order to see the value of $list before the pause command prompts:

$list | Out-Host  # Force *synchronous* to-display output.
pause             # Wait for the user to press Enter before exiting.

^{Note: pause in PowerShell is simply a function wrapper around Read-Host as follows: $null = Read-Host 'Press Enter to continue...' Therefore, if you want to customize the prompt string, call Read-Host directly.}

This answer explains why the use of Out-Host (or Format-Table) is necessary in this case; in short:

• In PSv5+, an implicitly applied Format-Table command asynchronously waits for up to 300 msecs. for additional pipeline input, in an effort to derive suitable column widths from the input data.

  • Because you use Write-Output output objects without predefined formatting data that have 2 properties (4 or fewer ), tabular output is implicitly chosen, and Format-Table is used behind the scenes, asynchronously.

  • Note: The asynchronous behavior applies only to output objects for whose types formatting instructions aren't predefined (as would be reported with Get-FormatData <fullOutputTypeName>); for instance, the output format for the System.Management.Automation.AliasInfo instances output by Get-Alias is predefined, so Get-Alias; pause does produce output in the expected sequence.

• The pause command executes before that waiting period has elapsed, and only after you've answered the prompt does the table print, after which point the window closes right away.

• The use of an explicit formatting command (Out-Host in the most generic case, but any Format-* cmdlet will do too) avoids that problem by producing display output synchronously, so that the output will be visible by the time pause displays its prompt.

Answer 2

I had the same problem for scripts that I'm executing "on demand". I tend to simply add a Read-Host at the end of the script like so

$str = "This text is hardly readable because the console closes instantly" 
Write-Output $str

Read-Host "Script paused - press [ENTER] to exit"