Automatically assign command output to a variable in Powershell

Question

Is there a hack to encapsulate all commands in a Powershell session so that all output is tee'd to a temporary variable?

My problem arises when I enter a command Some-Function

I'm fully aware of commands like Tee-Object and -OutVariable that allow me to pipe a function's output to a variable as well as to the console. I could accomplish my goal with the following:

Some-Function | Tee-Object -Variable PSMyCustomTempVariable

However, I often don't know or anticipate whether I need the variable until after I've run already run Some-Function. In this case, it'd be great to have a variable standing by that contains the output from the last function. This is especially helpful for functions that take a while to run like recursive file searches.

I've looked at about_Logging as well as Start-Transcript, but these seem to be concerned with recording text to a file; I need the objects returned by the function.

So, is there any way to modify my session so that any Powershell command Some-Function basically turns into Some-Function | Tee-Object -Variable PSMyCustomTempVariable?

Answer 1

Not exactly. However,

$Variable = (Some-Function)

will save the output of Some-Function in the variable $Variable, and allow you to then manipulate the data or pass it to other functions later on. To accomplish the equivalent of

Some-Function | Tee-Object -Variable $Variable

which would take the output of Some-Function, save it in $variable, and pass it through the pipe to the next command, you could use

$variable = (Some-Function)
$variable

(or $variable | Next-Command), and accomplish what you appear to want.