Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

The Invoke and BeginInvoke methods

The Invoke method used with each of the following examples executes the code immediately and synchronously. The BeginInvoke method is used to execute asynchronously, that is, without waiting for the last operation to complete.

Both the PowerShell instance object and the IASyncResult returned by BeginInvoke must be captured. Assigning the values allows continued access to the instances and is required to retrieve output from the commands:

$psInstance = [PowerShell]::Create().AddCommand('Start-Sleep').AddParameter('Seconds', 300)$asyncResult = $psInstance.BeginInvoke()

While the job is running, the InvocationStateInfo property of the PowerShell object will show as Running:

PS> $psInstance.InvocationStateInfo ...