From within a function, how to view the result that so far will be returned to the pipeline

Question

Recently I had to add an intermediate variable to a PowerShell script, otherwise the New-Item result would be part of the function result:

      # Put in local varible, otherwise we will return it as part of the function result
      $Local:logDirectory = New-Item -ItemType directory -Path $Local:logDir
      Write-Host "Created directory '$Local:logDir'"
  }
  return "$Local:logDir\$LogFileName"

While debugging this, I would have loved to be able to dump (Write-Host or something) the current bits that the function already has queued up to end in the pipeline upon function return.

So:

From within a PowerShell function, how to view the result that so far will be returned to the pipeline

Answer 1

Use PowerGUI (a powershell IDE), you will be able to insert breakpoints and inspect the runtime variables.

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/powergui/m/

You can also use piping to Out-Null, i.e:

New-Item -ItemType directory -Path $Local:logDir | Out-Null

to get rid of spurious output. Unfortunately you might have to go through your code line by line.