Write-Verbose output that doesn't wrap to command width in Powershell

Question

I'd like to Write-Verbose a lot of data to an out file. Here's how I'm doing it.

Start-Transcript -Path $TargetDir\RunUnitTests.log -Width 1000000
Write-Verbose "five million character lines and stuff"

This works great, except that the output is auto wrapped to the standard width of a console, this makes the log look absolutely terrible.

I found a solution here^{dead link removed} , but it's so involved and complicated that I don't want to just throw this in my script below a comment #Thar be dragons.

Is there a better way to do this?

For the related problem of prevent wrapping in all verbose output, not just from explicit calls to Write-Verbose, see this question. — mklement0
– mklement0, Commented Jan 8, 2017 at 13:02

Roman Kuzmin · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-05 06:02:05Z

5

Here is a very simple workaround based on Write-Host which does not have such a problem. In the beginning of the session install/dot-source the replacement of the default Write-Verbose:

function global:Write-Verbose
(
    [string]
    $Message
)
{
    # check $VerbosePreference variable
    if ($VerbosePreference -ne 'SilentlyContinue') {
        # do this via Write-Host
        Write-Host "VERBOSE: $Message" -ForegroundColor 'Yellow'
    }
}

Then this works as needed:

$VerbosePreference = 'Continue'
Start-Transcript -Path .\RunUnitTests.log
Write-Verbose ("verbose writes five million character lines and stuff. " * 20)

That is: it takes into account $VerbosePreference, it writes to host in yellow, transcript output is not wrapped and it is still marked VERBOSE.

**********************
Windows PowerShell Transcript Start
Start time: 20101105055855
**********************
Transcript started, output file is .\RunUnitTests.log
VERBOSE: verbose writes ... <long line text> ... and stuff.
**********************
Windows PowerShell Transcript End
End time: 20101105055855
**********************

answered Nov 5, 2010 at 6:02

Roman Kuzmin

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1 Comment

user337598 Over a year ago

You might perhaps want to also decorate the parameter to support pipelining [Parameter(Position=0, Mandatory=$true, ValueFromPipeline=$true)]

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