Is there a way to specify a font color when using write-output

Question

I have a powershell script that gives some status output via write-output. I am intentionally not using write-host because the output may be captured and written to a logfile like this:

./myscript.ps1 | out-file log.txt 

But if the output is not redirected it would be nice to have colored output on the console, because the script is producing a lot of different status messages. I know that colored output is possible with write-host but the status messages should be pipeable.

Any ideas how to solve this?

Answer 1

I have tried this extra function and it basically works fine:

function Write-ColorOutput($ForegroundColor) {     # save the current color     $fc = $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor      # set the new color     $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $ForegroundColor      # output     if ($args) {         Write-Output $args     }     else {         $input | Write-Output     }      # restore the original color     $host.UI.RawUI.ForegroundColor = $fc }  # test Write-ColorOutput red (ls) Write-ColorOutput green (ls) ls | Write-ColorOutput yellow 

The result of this particular test is a little bit funny though: we really get lines in red, green and yellow but the table header is in red, i.e. the color of the the first call of the function.

Answer 2

This way:

function Green {     process { Write-Host $_ -ForegroundColor Green } }  function Red {     process { Write-Host $_ -ForegroundColor Red } }  Write-Output "this is a test" | Green Write-Output "this is a test" | Red