Professional Windows® PowerShell

18.2. The set-PSDebug Cmdlet

The set-PSDebug cmdlet turns Windows PowerShell script debugging on and off.

NOTE

Members of the Windows PowerShell team have indicated a full script debugger is likely to be available in a future version of Windows PowerShell. As far as I am aware, no indication has been given of which version or of a likely timescale.

The set-PSDebug cmdlet supports the common parameters (described in Chapter 6) and the following parameters. Each of the listed parameters is optional. All are named parameters.

• Trace — Specifies how tracing is to be carried out. Permitted values for this property are the Int32 values 0, 1, and 2.

• Step — Step through code one statement at a time.

• Strict — Specifies that an exception should be thrown if a variable is referenced before it has been assigned a value.

• Off — Turn debugging off.

The values of the Trace parameter have the meanings shown in the following table.

Trace Parameter Value	Meaning
0	No debugging.
1	Trace script lines.
2	Trace script lines, variable assignments, function calls, and scripts.

The following commands show what debug information is (or is not) displayed when the simple assignment statement

$a = 10

is executed multiple times. First the statement is run with debug set to off; then, in succession, debug is set to Trace 0, Trace 1, Trace 2, and, finally, Off again.

As you can see in Figure 18-7, Trace 0 is the same as setting debugging to Off. No debugging information is displayed. When debugging is set to Trace 1, the ...