How to use custom PowerShell functions? - powershell

Question

Question about running a custom function in Powershell.
I'm on Windows 10 and I'd like to somehow print my monorepository's directory tree structure excluding node_modules. This is not supported out of the box but requires a custom function to be defined. I found one solution on StackOverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/a/43810460/9654273), which would enable using a command like:
tree -Exclude node_modules -Ascii > tree.txt
The problem is I don't know what to do with the provided source code :D The answer says "add to your $PROFILE, for instance", so I ran notepad $PROFILE in PowerShell, pasted the code snippet there, saved it and tried running the command. It didn't work because I did something wrong. According to the StackOverflow post's comments from anand_v.singh and mklement0 I was still running some other tree command, not the one I just attempted to define.
So how do I use a custom function in PowerShell? Starting point is that source code is on StackOverflow and I don't know where to paste it. Or do you know some other, easier way to print a directory tree on Windows 10 excluding node_modules?

Answer 1

I had the same problem with that function. The issue is the special characters in the hashtable at line 106:
$chars = #{
interior = ('├', '+')[$ndx]
last = ('└', '\')[$ndx] #'
hline = ('─', '-')[$ndx]
vline = ('│', '|')[$ndx]
space = ' '
}
I changed the special characters to ascii as follows:
$chars = #{
interior = ('+', '+')[$ndx]
last = ('\', '\')[$ndx] #'
hline = ('-', '-')[$ndx]
vline = ('|', '|')[$ndx]
space = ' '
}
The only downside is that you do not now have the option of using special graphics characters (the Ascii switch is still there, but does nothing). Maybe someone could tell us how to embed them properly.