Put the cursor on line six and hit F9 on the keyboard to add a breakpoint: When the code hits that line, it will drop into the debugger in the terminal. Unfortunately, after running the code, no files show up in the destination directory it's time for more PowerShell debugging. On line six, we see the first item in the converted JSON array. $json = Get-Content $file.FullName | ConvertTo-JsonĬopy-Item $file.FullName -Destination $targetDir $files = Get-ChildItem $sourceDir -filter 2020*.json For example: [Įxpand the script from the previous section to add a check for that date as well: $sourceDir = 'C:\tmp\logs' In our example, the JSON log files contain an array wherein the first item is the date the file was generated. This, however, only offers basic text editing functionality.įor more advanced features, it's best to switch over to Visual Studio Code for PowerShell debugging. Type in a command and then press Shift-Enter to start a new line. It's also possible to write a multiline script interactively in PowerShell. PedidosYa, Yahoo, and triGo GmbH are some of the popular companies that use Visual Studio Code, whereas Xcode is used by Instacart, Lyft, and PedidosYa. Heres a link to Visual Studio Codes open source repository on GitHub. PowerShell does enable admins to write long one-liners, but they can easily become too unwieldy to debug. Visual Studio Code is an open source tool with 78.4K GitHub stars and 10.9K GitHub forks. It's possible to make this snippet a little more intelligent - for example, check the contents of the file to ensure the timestamp inside the log file is also this year. Simply it is Visual Studio without the Visual UI, majorly a superman’s text-editor. Visual Studio Code: It’s a lightweight source code editor which can be used to view, edit, run, and debug source code for applications. Then, enter this one-liner (note: since we're running this command interactively, it is acceptable to use aliases, which are command shortcuts or alternate names): gci $sourceDir -filter *20*.json | % The second most obvious difference is that Visual Studio tends to be oriented around projects & solutions. Let's say we're writing a snippet of code to search the current directory for JSON log files that have the year 2020 in the name and then copy those files to another directory.īefore running a script at the console, set some required variables interactively at the prompt: $sourceDir = 'C:\tmp\logs' Visual Studio Code is a free-editor that helps the programmer write code, helps in debugging and. Visual Studio Code for PowerShell debugging. Visual Studio Code is a code editor in laymans terms. This tutorial walks through examples that further demonstrate when to use the console vs. For short scripts, the console offers plenty of debugging features, but to debug longer scripts or even modules, use an editor such as Visual Studio Code. There are two common options to debug a PowerShell script: the interactive PowerShell console, or one of many PowerShell code editors.