#68 : Understanding Try-Catch-Finally Blocks in Powershell

Try-Catch-Finally is language construct introduced in Powershell v2.0. It provides option to error handling in an elegant manner. While a faulty code might stop flow of your code, Try-Catch can be used to handle some of the obvious errors. For example, if you are writing to a file and suddenly disk got full, your script will fail miserably and error could be trapped further. The script will proceed further without having finishing pervious operation correctly. In a simple language, we can say that Try-Catch gives option to handle errors during runtime without impacting the desired flow of script.

(There are so many big articles written on this subject, this article is just a jump start. My intention is not re-invent the wheel.)


Below is a simple example using this language construct :
(It will run a divide-by-error operation and cause failure. The error will be forwarded on screen)

	#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	#-- Try catch Demo
	#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	cls
	function divide-numbers([int]$x , [int]$y)
	{
	Try {
	$z= $x/$y
	}
	Catch {
	echo "Failed with error : $($Error[0].Exception.Message) "
	echo "Error Occured while dividing $x with $y"
	}
	finally {
	echo $z
	}
	}
	divide-numbers 15 3
	divide-numbers 15 0
	#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

view raw try_catch_demo.ps1 hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Enjoy developing Powershell scripts!