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A New Trick with the Backtick

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I know, I’m opening this can of worms again.  You either love or hate the backtick in PowerShell.  The little thing is so awesome, but so hard to see.  It is no secret that I use it for line continuation.  I have a set of rules that I follow to allow me to use it without issues.  Here they are. 

At the end of the line:
o   Press SPACE
o   Press the BACKTICK
o   Press ENTER
o   Indent the first continued line
o   Do not use it on the last line of the command

Here is a command without line continuation:

New-ADFineGrainedPasswordPolicy -Name "Group1PSO" -Precedence 10 -ComplexityEnabled $True -Description "PSO for Group 1" -DisplayName"Group1PSO" -LockoutDuration "0.12:00:00" -LockoutObservationWindow "0.00:15:00" -LockoutThreshold 3 -MaxPasswordAge "10.00:00:00" -MinPasswordAge "1.00:00:00" -MinPasswordLength 8 -PasswordHistoryCount 10 -ReversibleEncryptionEnabled $False

Here is the same command following my rules.

New-ADFineGrainedPasswordPolicy -Name "Group1PSO" `
 -Precedence 10 `
 -ComplexityEnabled $True `
 -Description "PSO for Group 1" `
 -DisplayName "Group1PSO" `
 -LockoutDuration "0.12:00:00" `
 -LockoutObservationWindow "0.00:15:00" `
 -LockoutThreshold 3 `
 -MaxPasswordAge "10.00:00:00" `
 -MinPasswordAge "1.00:00:00" `
 -MinPasswordLength 8 `
 -PasswordHistoryCount 10 `
 -ReversibleEncryptionEnabled $False

I need to add another one.  Based on teaching PowerShell so many times, I need to make a change to the colors that I use in the PowerShell ISE and SAPIEN PowerShell studio.  I need to change the color of parameters so they are not so close to the color of a cmdlet.

Take a look at both of these. 
Normal
Changed parameter color
New-ADFineGrainedPasswordPolicy `
 -Name "Group1PSO" `
 -Precedence 10
 -ComplexityEnabled $True `
 -Description "PSO for Group 1"

New-ADFineGrainedPasswordPolicy `
 -Name "Group1PSO" `
 -Precedence 10
 -ComplexityEnabled $True `
 -Description "PSO for Group 1"


On the third line, I forgot to use a backtick.  On the example on the left, it is very hard to see the parameter on line 4 is not the correct color.  In the example on the right, it is. This makes it more obvious if you broke on of my rules and makes debugging easier.  These are the color settings that I am now using in my PowerShell classes.


PowerShell ISE:


In SAPIEN PowerShell Studio.
Click the Home tab and the Options on the far right.



I hope the PowerShell teams adds some type of splatting that allows for TAB completion.  That would get me to move away from the backtick.  But until then, I will continue to use it with my rules in place.  To learn more about line continuation in PowerShell, check out my blog article: Line Continuation in PowerShell – The Big Debate

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