Use the Power of PowerShell “Splatting”

Starting from Windows PowerShell 3.0, you can use “splatting”.
Splatting makes your commands shorter and scripts easier to read.

Splatting is a method of passing a collection of parameter values to a command as unit (using a hash table or an array).
Windows PowerShell associates each value in the collection with a command parameter.

Splatted parameter values are stored in named splatting variables, which look like standard variables, but begin with  an “at” symbol (@) instead of a dollar sign ($).
The “at” symbol (@) tells PowerShell that you are passing a collection of values, instead of a single value.

You can even re-use the splatting values in different command calls and use splatting to pass parameter values from the $PSBoundParameters automatic variable to other scripts and functions.    

Splatting with hash tables

Use a hash table to splat parameter name and value pairs. You can use  this format for all parameter types, including positional and named parameters and switch parameters.

Copy-Item -Path "test.txt" -Destination "test2.txt" –WhatIf

PS C:\>$HashArguments = @{ Path = "test.txt"; Destination = "test2.txt"; WhatIf = $true }
PS C:\>Copy-Item @HashArguments

Splatting with arrays

Use an array to splat values for positional parameters, which do not require parameter names. The values must be in position-number order in the array.

Copy-Item "test.txt" "test2.txt" –WhatIf

PS C:\>$ArrayArguments = "test.txt", "test2.txt"
PS C:\>Copy-Item @ArrayArguments -WhatIf

Making code more readable

Splatting is also very helpful to make your code shorter, but more importantly more readable.
If we apply some formatting the above example:

So is this new? No, I’m bringing it up again because it will be crucial in our next blog posts on advanced argument completers.

Hope this helps…

Related reading:

Windows PowerShell 5 Help about_Splatting

Scripting Guy blog – Use Splatting to Simplify Your PowerShell Scripts

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