Strange behavior with Powershell scriptblock variable scope and modules, any suggestions?
- by DanMan
NOTE: I'm using PowerShell 2.0 on Windows Vista.
I'm trying to add support for specifying build arguments to psake, but I've run into some strange PowerShell variable scoping behavior dealing specifically with calling functions that have been exported using Export-ModuleMember (which is how psake exposes it's main method). Following is a simple PowerShell module to illustrate (named repoCase.psm1):
function Test {
param(
[Parameter(Position=0,Mandatory=0)]
[scriptblock]$properties = {}
)
$defaults = {$message = "Hello, world!"}
Write-Host "Before running defaults, message is: $message"
. $defaults
#At this point, $message is correctly set to "Hellow, world!"
Write-Host "Aftering running defaults, message is: $message"
. $properties
#At this point, I would expect $message to be set to whatever is passed in,
#which in this case is "Hello from poperties!", but it isn't.
Write-Host "Aftering running properties, message is: $message"
}
Export-ModuleMember -Function "Test"
To test the module, run the following sequence of commands (be sure you're in the same directory as the repoCase.psm1):
Import-Module .\repoCase.psm1
#Note that $message should be null
Write-Host "Before execution - In global scope, message is: $message"
Test -properties { "Executing properties, message is $message"; $message = "Hello from properties!"; }
#Now $message is set to the value from the script block. The script block affected only the global scope.
Write-Host "After execution - In global scope, message is: $message"
Remove-Module repoCase
The behavior I expected was for the script block I passed to Test to affect the local scope of Test. It is being 'dotsourced' in, so any changes it makes should be within the scope of the caller. However, that's not what's happening, it seems to be affecting the scope of where it was declared. Here's the output:
Before execution - In global scope, message is:
Before running defaults, message is:
Aftering running defaults, message is: Hello, world!
Executing properties, message is
Aftering running properties, message is: Hello, world!
After execution - In global scope, message is: Hello from properties!
Interestingly, if I don't export Test as a module and instead just declare the function and invoke it, everything works just like I would expect it to. The script block affects only Test's scope, and does not modify the global scope.
I'm not a PowerShell guru, but can someone explain this behavior to me?
