Powershell Write-Host versus Write-Output and newlines between list items

Question

I can write output from Powershell with the following script:

Write-Host "Hello", "1234"
Write-Output "Hello", "2345"

The output from this program is:

Hello 1234
Hello
2345

So, the Write-Host with a comma separated list puts a space between the items. The Write-Output puts a newline between them. There are lots of differences between the 5 different Write-xxxxxxx statements, but why in the world would the output differ between these 2 statements and how can change Write-Output to act like Write-Host?

WTF Microsoft?

Write-Host breaks the pipeline so you shouldn't use it to process data. It writes directly to the console. — arco444
– arco444, Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 13:06
I can recommend the following blog post, which discusses Write-Host and mentions some alternatives: jsnover.com/blog/2013/12/07/write-host-considered-harmful — Manuel Batsching
– Manuel Batsching, Commented Jun 3, 2015 at 13:43

majkinetor · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-03 13:36:14Z

3

Write-Output understands objects and it writes to the pipeline, while Write-Host doesn't since its role is to write to the console host. You generally shouldn't use Write-Host except in special cases because that way you loose object oriented interface of Powerhsell and revert to cmd.exe paradigm.

To get what you want use:

write-output "$('Hello', '2345')"

When you put array inside of the string it is joined and delimited with $OFS separator which is by default <space>.

To understand this more clearly, consider the following example:

> write-output "hello", "world" | % { "item" }
item
item
> write-host "hello", "world" | % { "item" }
hello world

edited Jun 3, 2015 at 13:36

answered Jun 3, 2015 at 13:00

majkinetor

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