Newby question about grabbing current path

PowerShell Help
1

Hi folks, I’m trying to run the following commands and, by golly, I’m missing something because my variable is returning NULL. Thanks for any guidance you can provide!

$scriptpath = $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path
write-host ("Script Path is: " + $scriptpath)
$dir = Split-Path $scriptpath
write-host ("Dir is: " + $dir)

This is what I see in the console:

PS C:\Coding\PowerShell> $scriptpath = $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Path
PS C:\Coding\PowerShell> write-host ("Script Path is: " + $scriptpath)
Script Path is:
PS C:\Coding\PowerShell> $dir = Split-Path $scriptpath
Split-Path : Cannot bind argument to parameter ‘Path’ because it is null.
At line:1 char:19

  • $dir = Split-Path $scriptpath
  • CategoryInfo : InvalidData: (:slight_smile: [Split-Path], ParameterBindingValidationException
  • FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentValidationErrorNullNotAllowed,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SplitPat
    hCommand
2

You have to run this as script. If you don’t have a script you don’t have a script path. :wink:

3

Thanks Olaf. So if I’m working from the console and not a script I guess I could do something like this:

PS C:\Coding\PowerShell> $testpath = (Get-Location).path
PS C:\Coding\PowerShell> $testpath
C:\Coding\PowerShell

But is there another preferred method? Thanks for your time.

 

Ryan

4

You don’t have to do that by yourself.
Powershell has some predefined variables you don’t have to create explicitly. $PWD for the current working directory … you can use interactively in the console and $PSScriptRoot for the directory of the script you’re running.

You can read more about this with Get-Help about_Automatic_Variables.