My PowerShell exceptions aren't being caught

Question

Powershell v2:

try { Remove-Item C:\hiberfil.sys -ErrorAction Stop }
catch [System.IO.IOException]
{ "problem" }
catch [System.Exception]
{ "other" }

I'm using the hibernation file as an example, of course. There's actually another file that I expect I may not have permission to delete sometimes, and I want to catch this exceptional situation.

Output:

output

and yet $error[0] | fl * -Force outputs System.IO.IOException: Not Enough permission to perform operation.

Problem: I don't see why I'm not catching this exception with my first catch block, since this matches the exception type.

Shay Levy · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-01 14:53:31Z

8

When you use the Stop action PowerShell changes the type of the exception to:

[System.Management.Automation.ActionPreferenceStopException]

So this is the what you should catch. You can also leave it out and catch all types. Give this a try if you want to opearte on different excdeptions:

try 
{
    Remove-Item C:\pagefile.sys -ErrorAction Stop
}
catch
{
    $e = $_.Exception.GetType().Name

    if($e -eq 'ItemNotFoundException' {...}
    if($e -eq 'IOException' {...}
}

answered Feb 1, 2013 at 14:53

Shay Levy

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5 Comments

northben Over a year ago

ahh ok, that makes sense about the errorpreference. So then what's the deal with the catch [exceptiontype] syntax? According to blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/03/11/…, that's the way to do it...

Frode F. Over a year ago

Thats how you deal with terminating exceptions. Your was a non-terminating(which is why you specified erroraction to stop). That's why u have to use shay's solution.

Shay Levy Over a year ago

Exactly. By the way, if you look at the article you'll see that the catch for [System.Management.Automation.PSArgumentException] is not printing, only other values, such as for [system.exception] (which in my opinion is not necessary since all exceptions are of that type.

northben Over a year ago

ok, that helps a lot. I'm going to use -erroraction Stop with try/catch blocks for each individual command/function that I am concerned about.

wmchrog Over a year ago

The Scripting Guy link is actually: blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2010/03/11/…

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:19:20Z

0

I like the Trap method for global error handling, as I wanted to stop my scripts if unhandled exceptions were occurring to avoid corrupting my data. I set ErrorActionPreference to stop across the board. I then use Try/Catch in places where I may expect to see errors in order to stop them halting the scripts. See my question here Send an email if a PowerShell script gets any errors at all and terminate the script

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:19

CommunityBot

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answered Feb 2, 2013 at 14:27

HungryHippos

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