Is there a powershell pattern for if($?) { } - powershell

Question

I find myself chaining these a lot, eg:
do-cmd-one
if($?)
{
do-cmd-two
}
...
then at the end:
if(!$?)
{
exit 1
}
I assume there's a pattern for this in powershell but I don't know it.

Answer 1

PowerShell (Core) 7.0 introduced Bash-like && and || operators called pipeline-chain operators.
They will not be back-ported to Windows PowerShell, however, as the latter will generally see no new features.
In short, instead of:
do-cmd-one; if ($?) { do-cmd-two }
Note: Up to PowerShell 7.1, the more robust formulation is actually
do-cmd-one; if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0) { do-cmd-two }, for the reasons explained in this answer.
you can now write:
do-cmd-one && do-cmd-two
&& (AND) and || (OR) implicitly operate on each command's implied success status, as reflected in automatic Boolean variable $?.
This will likely be more useful with external programs, whose exit codes unambiguously imply whether $? is $true (exit code 0) or $false (any nonzero exit code).
By contrast, for PowerShell commands (cmdlets) $? just reflects whether the command failed as a whole (a statement-terminating error occurred) or whether at least one non-terminating error was reported; the latter doesn't necessarily indicate overall failure.
However, there are plans to allow PowerShell commands to set $? directly, as a deliberate overall-success indicator.
Also note that the following do not work with && and ||:
PowerShell's Test-* cmdlets, because they signal the test result by outputting a Boolean rather than by setting $?; e.g., Test-Path $somePath || Write-Warning "File missing" wouldn't work.
Boolean expressions, for the same reason; e.g., $files.Count -gt 0 || write-warning 'No files found' wouldn't work.
See this answer for background information, and the discussion in GitHub issue #10917.
There's a syntax caveat: As of this writing, the following will not work:
do-cmd-one || exit 1 # !! Currently does NOT work
Instead, you're forced to wrap exit / return / throw statements in $(...), the so-called subexpression operator:
do-cmd-one || $(exit 1) # Note the need for $(...)
GitHub issue #10967 discusses the reasons for this awkward requirement, which are rooted in the fundamentals of PowerShell's grammar.

Answer 2

Not sure if you like this any better.
if($(do-cmd-one; $?))
{
do-cmd-two
}
else
{
exit 1
}
Some other ideas. If actually doesn't check the exit code of a command. But if a command has no output when failing, and has output when successful, it can work. In this case, I'm hiding the error messages. If will always hide a command's regular output.
if(test-connection -Count 1 microsoft.com 2>$null) { 'yes' } # never responds
if(test-connection -Count 1 yahoo.com 2>$null) { 'yes' }
yes
Test-connection happens to have a quiet option that returns a boolean anyway:
if(test-connection -count 1 yahoo.com -quiet) { 'yes' }
yes
if(test-connection -count 1 microsoft.com -quiet) { 'yes' }