how to preserve parameter values after powershell function?

Question

I have a script like so:

test.ps1

param (
    $name,
$age
)

function load-parameters()
{
$name = "Bob"
$age = "23"

Write-Host "name: " $name
Write-Host "age: " $age
}

load-parameters
Write-Host "name: " $name
Write-Host "age: " $age

Except instead of name and age, i have about 10 parameters that i'm loading and initializing inside load-parameters.

The problem I am trying to solve is trying to preserve the values of the initialization of (what i think are) global scope functions inside the script.

The function above returns:

name:  Bob
age:  23
name:
age:

Are the local edits hardwired when you change them into functions? it looks like the implementation is that parameters are being passed by copy to functions you write inside a script.

I realize I can get around this by passing the variables by reference (if there is even a thing in powershell functions), but that would be ugly given the number of parameters i need to pass. is there a way to specify the scope of the variable when i'm doing the assignment inside function "load-parameters"?

manojlds · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-21 02:21:56Z

1

It is not super clear what you want to achieve with the load parameters. What you are trying to do maybe solved with default values for the parameters for your script:

param (
    $name = "Bob",
    $age = "23"
)

Another option for what you are trying is to use the variables with script scope:

$script:name = "Bob"

So in the functions you can do something like:

function load-parameters
{
$script:name = "Bob"
$script:age = "23"

Write-Host "name: " $name
Write-Host "age: " $age
}

answered Mar 21, 2012 at 2:21

manojlds

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1 Comment

Fred Wang Over a year ago

can't use default values as my loading logic is a giant switch statement, so there's conditional logic there that i want to keep in load-parameters(), but the script scope worked great. thanks.

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