Powershell script: Can't read return value of executed program
powershell, windows
Solution
To start with
# This will hold the last executed EXE return code
$LastExitCode
# For console apps, where 0 is true, else is false, this will hold either True or False
$?
As for reading the STDERR, i guess the quickest way will be to run the script with stream redirection
$a = c:\path_to_wget\wget.exe --quiet -O - "http://www.example.com/import_db" 2>&1
Problem
I am using PowerShell to run a script that executes `wget` to fetch a web page (a simple database import script) and analyzes its output (Error message or "OK"). I am using code from the answer to this previous question of mine. ``` $a = c:\path_to_wget\wget.exe --quiet -O - "http://www.example.com/import_db" $rc = $a.CompareTo("OK") exit $rc ``` When the result of the wget operation is a 404 - and wget probably returns an errorlevel 1 or 127 - I get the following error message from PowerShell: ``` You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression. ``` this obviously refers to my calling the `CompareTo()` function. However, wget gets executed and outputs something. I am suspecting that wget outputs to the error console in this case, and this does not get caught by my $a operation. How can I redirect the error output so that it gets caught by my script? Boy, I'm sure going to be question king in the PowerShell tag this month! :)