Terminating vs non-terminating errors in PowerShell - Hands-On Comparison

Understanding Terminating vs Non-Terminating Errors in PowerShell

📖 Scenario: You are writing a PowerShell script to process a list of files. Sometimes, errors happen when accessing files. You want to see how PowerShell handles different types of errors: terminating and non-terminating.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to create commands that produce terminating and non-terminating errors, and how to catch and display these errors in PowerShell.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of file paths including one that does not exist

Set a variable to control error action preference

Write commands that cause terminating and non-terminating errors

Display error messages to understand the difference

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

In real scripts, handling errors properly helps keep automation running smoothly without stopping unexpectedly.

💼 Career

Understanding error types and handling is essential for system administrators and automation engineers to write reliable PowerShell scripts.

1

Create a list of file paths

Create a variable called filePaths that contains these exact strings: 'C:\Windows\notepad.exe', 'C:\InvalidPath\file.txt', and 'C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe'.

PowerShell

# Create the variable $filePaths with the exact file paths
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use an array with @() and include the exact file paths as strings.

2

Set error action preference

Create a variable called errorAction and set it to the string 'Continue' to allow non-terminating errors to show but continue running.

PowerShell

$filePaths = @('C:\Windows\notepad.exe', 'C:\InvalidPath\file.txt', 'C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe')
# Set errorAction to 'Continue'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string 'Continue' to the variable $errorAction.

3

Try to get file info with non-terminating errors

Use a foreach loop with variable $file to go through $filePaths. Inside the loop, run Get-Item $file -ErrorAction $errorAction to get file info. This will show non-terminating errors for invalid paths.

PowerShell

$filePaths = @('C:\Windows\notepad.exe', 'C:\InvalidPath\file.txt', 'C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe')
$errorAction = 'Continue'
# Loop through filePaths and get file info with non-terminating errors
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use foreach to loop and Get-Item with the variable $file and -ErrorAction $errorAction.

4

Try to get file info with terminating errors and catch them

Set $errorAction to 'Stop'. Use a foreach loop with $file over $filePaths. Inside the loop, use try and catch blocks. In try, run Get-Item $file -ErrorAction $errorAction. In catch, print "Error caught: $($_.Exception.Message)".

PowerShell

$filePaths = @('C:\Windows\notepad.exe', 'C:\InvalidPath\file.txt', 'C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe')
$errorAction = 'Continue'
foreach ($file in $filePaths) {
    Get-Item $file -ErrorAction $errorAction
}
# Change errorAction to 'Stop' and use try-catch to handle terminating errors
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use try-catch with Get-Item and -ErrorAction 'Stop'. In catch, print the error message with Write-Output.