When building an interactive script capturing a single key press might be necessary. In the previous article, QuickTip: Read single key press from PowerShell console, I showed how this is possible using the $host variable. In this article I will show how to read a key press using the [System.Console] class and in particular the ReadKey method.
The following example uses ReadKey with a single argument, $true, to ensure that the result of the function is not output to the console. Omitting $true or passing on $false as an argument will result in the output being displayed in the console as well as stored in the variable. Have a look at the example here:
$KeyPress = [System.Console]::ReadKey($true) |
Similarly to the $host object ReadKey method not only the key itself but also the modifiers are passed on to the console. Here is the result of this method:
PS> $KeyPress KeyChar Key Modifiers ------- --- --------- J J Shift |
The modifiers are slightly different from what the $host object output. To have a look at the possible values we dig a bit further into the object stored in $KeyPress:
PS> $KeyPress.Modifiers.GetType() IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType -------- -------- ---- -------- True True ConsoleModifiers System.Enum PS> [Enum]::GetNames([System.ConsoleModifiers]) Alt Shift Control |
For more information about the System.Console class have a look at its MSDN entry: Console Class
