I encountered a challenge that I failed to resolve the way I wanted it to do.
I got a file that contains a powershell script, but that file does not have the extension assigned to powershell. The question is: How can I execute a powershell in a script file with the wrong file extension (or none)?
Invoke-Expression does not seem to work because it always executes the default action assigned to the file type. If I give that cmdlet a *.txt file the editor pops open.
I know that I can resolve that by renaming the script file or naming it properly in the first place. This is what I ended up doing.
Still I wonder if it is possible to execute a file as a script with the wrong file extension without modifying, renaming or coping the file. And if it is not working… why is that?
Powershell is designed such that executing or dot sourcing a file requires a .ps1 extension, and Powershell.exe will refuse to run any file that doesn't have that extension.
One way to invoke Powershell code from a non-ps1 file is to launch Powershell.exe using STDIN, and pipe your script to it. This requires a new shell, so is not very good for launching scripts from within an existing scripting environment.
Powershell.exe - < thescript.txt
Another way is to create a temporary .ps1 file and execute that. This has the advantage of using the current scripting environment, but requires a temporary file.
Copy-Item -Path '.\thescript.txt' -Dest '.\temp.ps1'
. .\temp.ps1
del .\temp.ps1
In my opinion, the file extension restriction is silly, but that's how it was designed. Apocryphally, this is for security reasons, but I can find no citation to back it up.
Or you use Get-Content to read the file and then invoke that with Invoke-Expression or Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock.
Related
just for understanding this.
I want to open my Powershell in a certain folder. As I didn´t find out how, I tried to put a batch file with just "cd ....." in it in the default folder where PowerShell opens.
When I execute the batch, though, I end up where I started from.
It seems that the batch gets excuted in a subshell which doesn´t affect the Parentshell.
How can I execute the stuff in the batchfile in parentshell ?
Thanks in advance!
You cannot. Batch files are executed by cmd, not PowerShell, so there will always be a new process for them.
With a PowerShell script you can use dot-sourcing
. Script.ps1
To execute the script in your current scope, which is most similar to how batch files are executed by cmd by default.
If you want to open your Powershell in a certain folder, you can set that up in your Powershell profile. In Powershell, type $profile and that will give you the location of your profile file. Edit that file and use Set-Location:
Set-Location 'C:\Some\Place'
Powershell will execute whatever is in your profile script every time you open a new Powershell session.
There are quite some questions asked already regarding this issue, but none of the answers resolved mine.
I wrote following batch script:
powershell.exe -executionpolicy bypass -file "./myps.ps1"
I saved the file as autorun.cmd
Whenever I double-click the cmd file, nothing happens, CLI quickly shows up and closes but powershell was not executed.
If I run the same command directly in CLI, it works.
I am really confused on what's going on here. Any help would be appreciated.
Saving it as a .bat extension will fix it. Like you, I was never able to get a .cmd file to work as a batch file as well.
So, hi and welcome to this platform...
I try run this powershel code above, that convert ansi to unicode file, by bat file using your command inside the bat:
Set-Location ".\"
Get-Content 'ansi.txt' | Set-Content -Encoding unicode 'outunicode.txt'
And all running fine, my bat call to execute .ps1 code (copied from you to test propose), above the code inside bat file, like your code:
powershell.exe -executionpolicy bypass -file "./myps.ps1"
All run OK, no error, and the result file OK too!
So, this make me suggest to you, that maybe you need try running the bat file direct in your command line for to be able to see possible error message, and filling if this is a bat/powershell/security/other error, and, if possible, post/share the content .ps1 file, I'm 100% sure, that here are someone (a lot of them) will be capable help you precisely and quickly. Sorry my English.
I'm trying to have a few scripts that I can map to run from my keyboard for quickly changing the monitor/screen brightness. After some searching on the internet, I found this script which works when I enter it into Powershell.
$monitor=#(gwmi WmiMonitorBrightnessMethods -ns root/wmi)[0]
$monitor.WmiSetBrightness(50,0)
After I saved it as a .ps1 file and tried running it from the file, powershell tells me: The term "path of the file" is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function... and so on.
I'm not familiar with Powershell at all, can someone help with what I need to add in order for the script to run properly?
By default you can't run a PowerShell script that is in the current directory without putting .\ in front of the script name, or calling the full path of the script.
This is a security feature.
If you are in the directory that contains the script, run it by executing in a PowerShell window:
.\yourscript.ps1
Where yourscript is the name of your script.
See here for more information: https://ss64.com/ps/syntax-run.html
You may also see this error if your script has spaces in its name. If that is the case, enclose the path in quotes:
.\'your script.ps1'
I am using ops tool Rundeck that allows for execution of arbitrary scripts. I enter the script text in the web application widget and upon execution, Rundeck saves it to temporary file and calls interpreter. The problem is that the temporary file doesn't have ps1 extension and Powershell refuses to execute it.
Is there any way to set up Powershell to ignore extension ?
=== EDIT 2018 ===
Rundeck now has an option for this within a job definition.
I know I'm not strictly answering your questions regarding setting up PowerShell to ignore extensions, but here is one way of executing code from a textfile:
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([ScriptBlock]::Create((Get-Content .\file.txt)))
This reads the contents of file.txt and converts it into a scriptblock, before executing it using Invoke-Command.
I have a third-party application that's extensible by adding exe-files that perform dataconversion etc. I've written an extension in Powershell that does the conversion I want, but I'm unable to get the third-party app to run my ps1, as it will only accept an .exe file as an extension.
The app adds a filename as the first (and only) commandline argument to the extension, so the command it runs looks like:
someprogram.exe somefile.xml
I tried to get it to run Powershell.exe with my script as an argument, but I haven't been able to figure out how and if that's possible. Some stuff I tried like
powershell.exe myscript.ps1
won't work. I tried getting the script to find the correct XML file itself, but still somehow I couldn't get Powershell to run off the commandline and take a script as an argument and run it.
Next I thought about writing a small .exe file that only runs the Powershell script, but is that even possible? If it is, could someone nudge me in the right direction?
Powershell wants to have a qualified path to script files before it will run them. So you need to either use
powershell.exe .\myscript.ps1
if it lies in the current working directory (unlikely and prone to break for this use case) or use the full path to the script:
powershell.exe C:\Users\Foo\Scripts\myscript.ps1
or similar.
You can also try Powershell.exe -Command "& your-app.exe ${your-arguments}