Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Third Edition

Named blocks and return

The return keyword may be used to gracefully end the execution of a piece of code.

The return keyword is often confused with return in C#, where it explicitly returns a thing from a method. In PowerShell, return has a slightly different purpose.

When a named block is executing, the return keyword may be used to end the processing of a block early without stopping the rest of the pipeline.

For example, a return statement in the process block ends early in certain cases. The end block will continue to execute as normal:

function Invoke-Return {    process {        if ($_ -gt 2) {            return        }        $_    }    end {        'All done'    }}

When run, the process block will end early when the condition is met:

PS> 1..10 | Invoke-Return12All done