PowerShell vNext: AST.

What is that?

There is one addition in PowerShell vNext that I look really forward to. In v2 we have parser available. It makes work with PowerShell code easier. But PowerShell team haven’t stopped there. AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) is new concept (at least – to me) and it makes parsing code more interesting: instead of stream of tokens (which is still there with AST and is also more accurate than v2 precedents) we get tree of syntax: from Script to single Statement. Browsing thru that tree may be very hard at first. I tried to use view that seems natural for that kind of complex structures: Format-Custom. The problem that I went into was the fact, that each AST contains “Extent” and “Parent” property. And those properties keep whole code which makes Format-Custom lengthy and impractical. So my first step was to create .ps1xml files to make format and object themselves bit different. I hidden two properties I think are not very useful. You can still access them using psbase on each object – and that exactly the information you get if you try to access them directly. Next step I took was to create simple function that would wrap .NET call to System.Management.Automation.Language.Parser static methods (ParseInput, ParseFile) and make use of them more natural and PowerShell-ish. Then I packed it all in the module, so that I could paste it somewhere and let others use it and complain about things I did wrong (like using global scope to store tokens/ errors).

Select groups of code in ISE.

New(er) ISE comes with lots of cool features. One of them is group-matching in editor. This is more than expected from modern editor. But wouldn’t that be handy to have possibility to easily select whole group? If you put cursor at the border of group – matching charter will be highlighted to simplify job. But for me – that’s too much work. How about simple function that would select whole group for me?

CTP1 to CTP2 gotcha… :)

Ok, CTP2 is out. This is a great news, and a lot of things to play. Newer ISE, finally fixed “killer TAB” in console, Update-Help that picks up data from network and more.

There is one thing you need to be aware of: CTP1 and CTP2 both installed at the same time is a really bad idea. Trust me, you don’t want to see it (any command results in pages and pages of errors, tab does not work, highlighting syntax in ISE is total disaster).