PowerShell v2 Simple Write Progress Example

I like the idea of write progress, but, it can be a little confusing depending on how complex your wiring up of the counters is. Using one of the Get-Help examples I wrote this to display a progress bar while iterating through a GCI collection:

$begin = {$i=0;$out=}

$end = { $out }

$process = {

      $i++;

      Write-Progress-PercentComplete ($i/$filecount*100) -Activity Showing simple counter-Status Progress:

}

$files = Get-ChildItemC:Windowssystem32

$filecount = $files.count

$files |

ForEach-Object -Begin $begin -Process $process -end $end

This is really nothing more than window dressing as it does nothing more than show this (where more os are added as it iterates over the collection:

Showing simple counter

   Progress:

   [ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo                                 ]

In reality, I used this to indicate how long a file copy was running which looked like this:

# Collect file info

$filecount = ($files = Get-ChildItem -Path $BaseFolder -Recurse).count

$begin = {$i=0;$out=}

$end = { $out }

$process = {

      $i++;

      Write-Progress -PercentComplete ($i/$filecount*100) -Activity Copying files -Status Progress:

      Write-Verbose "$(Write-TimeStamp): Copying $($_.fullname).";

      Copy-Item -Path $_.fullname -Destination ($_.fullname -replace test,$environment)                           

}

Also, a nice trick I try to use whenever I can is the first line. Gather two pieces of information in one line:

 $filecount = ($files = Get-ChildItem -Path $BaseFolder -Recurse).count