Echo equivalent in PowerShell for script testing

Question

There are several ways:

Write-Host: Write directly to the console, not included in function/cmdlet output. Allows foreground and background colour to be set.

Write-Debug: Write directly to the console, if $DebugPreference set to Continue or Stop.

Write-Verbose: Write directly to the console, if $VerbosePreference set to Continue or Stop.

The latter is intended for extra optional information, Write-Debug for debugging (so would seem to fit in this case).

Additional: In PSH2 (at least) scripts using cmdlet binding will automatically get the -Verbose and -Debug switch parameters, locally enabling Write-Verbose and Write-Debug (i.e. overriding the preference variables) as compiled cmdlets and providers do.

Powershell has an alias mapping echo to Write-Output, so you can use:

echo "filesizecounter : $filesizecounter"

PowerShell interpolates, does it not?

In PHP

echo "filesizecounter: " . $filesizecounter 

can also be written as:

echo "filesizecounter: $filesizecounter" 

In PowerShell something like this should suit your needs:

Write-Host "filesizecounter: $filesizecounter"

Write-Host "filesizecounter : " $filesizecounter 

By far the easiest way to echo in powershell, is just create the string object and let the pipeline output it:

$filesizecounter = 8096
"filesizecounter : $filesizecounter"

Of course, you do give up some flexibility when not using the Write-* methods.

echo is alias to Write-Output although it looks the same as Write-Host.

It isn't What is the difference between echo and Write-Host in PowerShell?.

echo is an alias for Write-Output, which writes to the Success output stream. This allows output to be processed through pipelines or redirected into files. Write-Host writes directly to the console, so the output can't be redirected/processed any further.

The Write-host work fine.

$Filesize = (Get-Item $filepath).length;
Write-Host "FileSize= $filesize";