Commenting your Code

There is nothing more frustrating than looking at Powershell code from someone else – who didn’t bother to comment the code. 1000 lines without a clue of what is happening, unless you understand the relevance of each command in context. Uhg.

In Powershell one can use the # symbol (Pound or Hashtag) to denote information that is “notes” and not part of the code.

For example I will denote section headers with large blocks of # signs for visibility:

############################################
#
# This section is about commenting your code
#
############################################

and smaller notes with a smaller comment:

####################
## Loop through this

You can also add a # at the end to comment out a piece – for example if I use a whatif for testing but don’t want it there once the code is “production”.

$user = Get-Aduser -name $inputname #-whatif

NOTE: Whereever the #starts, the code ends.

In additon you can use a “Regions” to denote sections of your code. Like college football conferences… but with less gerrymandering.

To do this we use the # sign and the word “region” followed by a description to start the section:

#region Our Variables

And then # and “endregion” to end the section.

#endregion

Most powershell editors, like PowerGui Script editor, will then allow you to collapse the region – makes browsing over sections of code:

I hope you find this useful.