Pro Windows PowerShell

22.6. Detecting If Our Script Has Been Terminated by the User

Let's get back to our first example, which watches a folder for file delete operations, and see what happens if the user presses Ctrl+C while the script is listening for events. We will add a Write-Host call after the script that will get called after the script ends. Here is what we get:

PS C:\PowerShell> .\WatchDeletedFiles.ps1 ; Write-Host "Done"
PS C:\PowerShell>

Yes, we get nothing—not even the "Done" message. PowerShell terminates not only the script but the entire command that has been typed. Handling Ctrl+C is a weak spot in PowerShell 1.0, and that is why the PSEventing snap-in provides two cmdlets that can help us: Start-KeyHandler and Stop-KeyHandler. They can trap various ...