Powershell: hashtable content not displayed within a function

Question

I have a function to which I pass a hashtable. Within the function I want to 1) Display text on-screen via Write-Host; 2) display the contents of the hashtable one time -- to provide the usual two-column "Name" / "Value" hashtable display. 3) Have the function return `$true` or `$false`. ``` MyFunction $MyHashTable ``` Within the function: ``` param ( [hashtable]$TheHashTable ) # Sundry things here and then: write-host "Some information to display on-screen`n" # and then: $TheHashTable ``` The expected result of the latter is something like: ``` Some information to display on-screen Name Value ---- ----- a b c d ``` And eventually: ``` return $true # If what I'm doing worked; otherwise, $false ``` If I call the function as shown above, I see text displayed via `Write-Host` on-screen, plus the two-column display of the hashtable's contents -- and the text `True` or `False` on-screen, depending on what the function returns. If I call it this way: ``` $myResult = MyFunction $MyHashTable…

Accepted Answer

Any output generated by your function will be sent down the pipeline. This is exactly what happens when you write:

```
$TheHashTable
```

If you want to write this value to the screen instead of the pipeline you should also use `Write-Host` like you do earlier in the example like so:

```
Write-Host $TheHastTable
```

However using the code above you will probably get something like the following output:

```
PS>$table = @{ "test"="fred";"barney"="wilma"}
PS> write-host $table
System.Collections.DictionaryEntry System.Collections.DictionaryEntry
```

Apparently `Write-Host` does not apply the formatting you expect, this can be fixed by using `Out-String` like so:

```
PS> $table | Out-String | Write-Host
```

resulting in:

```
Name                           Value
----                           -----
barney                         wilma
test                           fred
```

Powershell: hashtable content not displayed within a function

Solution

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