In a previous post I wrote a butt-simple function with three parameters, called it a couple ways, and talked about how the function returns its data either as a single string or as an array of variables. Before leaving this, I’m going to experiment about returning data as a hash table.
function Get-ReallySimple($fname,$lname,$age) {
$OutTable=@{"FirstName"=$fname;"LastName"=$lname;"Age"=$age}
return $OutTable
}
This prints out nicely, except it is in the wrong order.
PS>Get-ReallySimple Joe Dokes 32
Name Value ---- ----- Age 32 FirstName Joe LastName Dokes
By adding the ordered keyword in front of the hash table definition, we can get the hash table to print in the order in which we asked for the function’s input paramenters.
function Get-ReallySimple($fname,$lname,$age) {
$OutTable= [ordered] @{"FirstName"=$fname;"LastName"=$lname;"Age"=$age}
return $OutTable
}
PS>Get-ReallySimple Joe Dokes 32
Name Value
—- —–
FirstName Joe
LastName Dokes
Age 32
Since the result is a hash table we can also return a portion of the table using dot notation. We surround the functional call with parentheses to force the call to be evaluated first.
PS>(Get-ReallySimple Joe Dokes 32).FirstName
Joe
Of course instead of the the parentheses we probably should assign the call to a variable; and then dot notate that.
$Zilch=Get-ReallySimple Joe Dokes 32
$Zilch.FirstName
Joe
There is an Output Type attribute that can be applied to a function, but this appears to be cosmetic. It doesn’t enforce or do any error checking. If your function returns a string, and Output type says “hashtable”, nothing happens; the function still return the string. According to the help documentation the purpose of the Output Type attribute is to provide documentation; but when I queried with Get-Command Get-ReallySimple, it returned nothing for the output.
tfnp 