In PowerShell, error handling is a crucial aspect of writing robust and reliable scripts. One of the powerful features to manage errors gracefully is the trap statement. The trap statement allows you to define a block of code that runs whenever a terminating error occurs in your script. This can be particularly useful for logging errors, cleaning up resources. Let’s dive in.

trap Statement?

A trap statement is similar to try and catch blocks found in many other programming languages. However, in PowerShell, trap provides a more traditional way of handling errors. When an error occurs, the trap statement captures it and executes the code within the trap block.

Consider the example below

trap [type] {
    # Code to handle the error
    continue
}

• type: Optional. type of error.
• continue: Resumes execution after the trap block is executed. Other possible actions: break, return, and throw.

In this example, when the division by zero occurs, the trap statement catches the error and prints a message.

Example: Division with trap

function Divide-Numbers { 
    param ( 
        [int]$a, 
        [int]$b 
        ) 
    trap { Write-Host "Error: Division by zero is not allowed." 
    continue 
} 
    $result = $a / $b 
    Write-Host "Result: $result" 
} 
Divide-Numbers -a 10 -b 0

The output displays the trap message.

That’s for today. Hope this was helpful.