CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellsyntaxcommand-line-interface
yesii_0691
yesii_0691

Reputation: 23

how can I run my powershell script in line?

I want to execute powershell inline , but when I try to execute everything. I got Out-Null : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'do'.

$OutputString = 'Hello World'
$WScript = New-Object -ComObject 'wscript.shell'
$WScript.Run('notepad.exe') | Out-Null
do {
    Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100
    }
until ($WScript.AppActivate('notepad'))
$WScript.SendKeys($OutputString)

inline powershell 

 powershell -Command $OutputString = 'Hello World';$WScript = New-Object -ComObject 'wscript.shell';$WScript.Run('notepad.exe') | Out-Null ;do{ Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100};until($WScript.AppActivate('notepad'));$WScript.SendKeys($OutputString);

I want to get the same result inline , but I got this issue

Upvotes: 0

Views: 3500

Answers (1)

mklement0
mklement0

Reputation: 437248

Your code had 3 problems:

  • a missing ; before the do statement (multiple statements placed on a single line must be ;-separated in PowerShell)
    • you've later added that, which makes your command inconsistent with the described symptom.

  • a missing until keyword after do { ... }

    • you've later added that, but with a preceding ;, which breaks the do statement.

  • unescaped use of |, which means that cmd.exe itself interpreted it, not PowerShell as intended (I'm assuming you're calling this from cmd.exe, otherwise there'd be no need to call PowerShell's CLI via powershell.exe).

    • | must be escaped as ^| to make cmd.exe pass it through to PowerShell.

Fixing these problems yields the following command for use from cmd.exe:

# From cmd.exe / a batch file:
powershell -Command $OutputString = 'Hello World'; $WScript = New-Object -ComObject 'wscript.shell'; $WScript.Run('notepad.exe') ^| Out-Null; do{ Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100} until ($WScript.AppActivate('notepad')); $WScript.SendKeys($OutputString)

If you do want to run your code from PowerShell, you can just invoke it directly, as shown in the first snippet in your question - there's no need to create another PowerShell process via powershell.exe

If, for some reason, you do need to create another PowerShell process, use the script-block syntax ({ ... }) to pass the command, in which case no escaping is needed:

# From PowerShell
powershell -Command { $OutputString = 'Hello World'; $WScript = New-Object -ComObject 'wscript.shell'; $WScript.Run('notepad.exe') | Out-Null; do{ Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 100} until ($WScript.AppActivate('notepad')); $WScript.SendKeys($OutputString) }

Upvotes: 1

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