How to Provide Progress Updates with Windows PowerShell

The following excerpt is from Windows PowerShell Cookbook, Second Edition. The author speaks to what is needed should you wish to display status information to the user for long-running tasks.

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To provide status updates, use the Write-Progress cmdlet shown in Example 13-5.

##############################################################################
##
## Invoke-LongRunningOperation
##
## From Windows PowerShell Cookbook (O'Reilly)
## by Lee Holmes (http://www.leeholmes.com/guide)
##
##############################################################################

<#

.SYNOPSIS

Demonstrates the functionality of the Write-Progress cmdlet

#>

Set-StrictMode -Version Latest

$activity = "A long running operation"
$status = "Initializing"

## Initialize the long-running operation
for($counter = 0; $counter -lt 100; $counter++)
{
    $currentOperation = "Initializing item $counter"
    Write-Progress $activity $status -PercentComplete $counter `
        -CurrentOperation $currentOperation
    Start-Sleep -m 20
}

$status = "Running"

## Initialize the long-running operation
for($counter = 0; $counter -lt 100; $counter++)
{
    $currentOperation = "Running task $counter"
    Write-Progress $activity $status -PercentComplete $counter `
        -CurrentOperation $currentOperation
    Start-Sleep -m 20
}

The Write-Progress cmdlet provides a way for you to provide structured status information to the users of your script for long-running operations.




Like the other detailed information channels (Write-Debug, Write-Verbose, and the other Write-* cmdlets), PowerShell lets users control how much of this information they see.

For more information about the Write-Progress cmdlet, type Get-Help Write-Progress.