About powershell variable scope

Question

powersell variable scope include:global,script,private,local.

I test a variable in loop, bug why it have value outside loop?

$a=$false
for ($i = 0; $i -lt 10; $i++) {
    $private:recObj=@{}
    $private:recObj.id=$i
    if ($i -lt 6) {
        $a=$true
    }else {
        $a=$false
    }

    $private:recObj.a=$a
    $private:recObj.b="2323"
}

$private:recObj #recObj is private, why here have output? I want it is null

the result:

Name                           Value
----                           -----
b                              2323
id                             9
a                              False

Mike Shepard · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-08 03:39:57Z

4

Loop bodies in PowerShell are not scopes. Private in this case is the entire script.

answered Sep 8, 2017 at 3:39

Mike Shepard

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Comments

Ranadip Dutta · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-08 03:57:33Z

I am not an expert in this, but I want to highlight few things.

Scopes are like our Dot Net Scopes:

Global is public,
Script is internal,
Private is private,
Local is current stack level

Next one is the Visiblity

By default powershell visiblity is Public.

if you use

(Get-Variable -Name recObj).Visibility

you should see the visibility of that variable. If you consider the for loops as a separate scope, then its wrong in PS.

Third, you do not need to declare everywhere private; one time will do that:

$a=$false
for ($i = 0; $i -lt 10; $i++) {
    $private:recObj=@{}
    $recObj.id=$i
    if ($i -lt 6) {
        $a=$true
    }else {
        $a=$false
    }

    $recObj.a=$a
    $recObj.b="2323"
}
$recObj

But you want to restrict it , then you explicitly make the visibility private.

 Set-Variable recObj -Visibility Private

Hope it helps you in better understanding.

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