I spend a fair amount of time in the PowerShell ISE. One task that I find myself needing, especially lately, is the ability to print a script file. I'm sure you noticed there is no Print menu choice. So I decided to add my own to the ISE.<\/p>\n
Printing a file in PowerShell is actually not that difficult: get the text content and send it to Out-Printer.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nGet-Content myscript.ps1 | Out-Printer
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
This will send the file to the default printer. In the ISE, you could use a command like this:<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nGet-Content $PSISE.CurrentFile.FullPath | out-printer
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
One issue I've found with Out-Printer is that the formatting sometimes isn't as nice I'd like; I end up with a variable width font and not a fixed width. Another way, though which always guarantees a fixed width font is to use Notepad. Fortunately, you can print with Notepad right from a command prompt.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nnotepad \/p c:\\scripts\\myscript.ps1
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
This will print to the default printer using whatever last settings you used for Notepad. I tend to bump the font size. See where I'm going with this?<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nNotepad \/p $PSISE.CurrentFile.FullPath
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
That's really all there is to it, but I hate typing any more than I have to. So I wrote a simple function that I can use in the ISE.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nFunction Print-ISEFile {<\/p>\n
Param([string]$path=$PSISE.CurrentFile.FullPath)<\/p>\n
Start-Process -filepath Notepad.exe -ArgumentList \"\/p\",$path -WindowStyle Hidden<\/p>\n
<#\nthis is an alternative way using the default printer\n get-content -Path $path | out-printer\n#><\/p>\n
} #end function
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
In my final function I decided to use Start-Process to hide as much of the popup windows as I could. Once the function is loaded, I can run the function and it will print the current file. But let's take this one step further and add the function as a menu option to the AddOns menu.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\n$psISE.CurrentPowerShellTab.AddOnsMenu.submenus.Add(\"Print Script\",{Print-ISEFile},\"CTRL+ALT+P\") | Out-Null
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
This will add a menu choice called Print Script with a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+Alt+P. I dot source the script file in my PowerShell ISE profile and I'm good to go.<\/p>\n