Powershell: Default Export-FormatData to pretty-printing or add an option

Created on 19 Apr 2018  路  2Comments  路  Source: PowerShell/PowerShell

Related: #6680

One use case for Export-FormatData - even though about_Format.ps1xml doesn't currently mention it - is to use existing formatting definitions as a starting point for creating new ones.

To that end, outputting _pretty-printed_ XML would be much more convenient - currently, a single-line XML string is output.

  • If changing the existing behavior is not a backward-compatibility concern:

    • Simply output pretty-printed XML by default (it will consume more space, however)
  • Otherwise:

    • Introduce a switch such as -Format (or, to follow the - inverted - logic of ConvertTo-Json, perhaps -Uncompress?) that results in pretty-printed output.

Environment data

Written as of:

PowerShell Core v6.0.2
Area-Cmdlets-Core Issue-Enhancement Resolution-Fixed

Most helpful comment

@mklement0 This sounds like a good thing to do. (I would have thought we were already doing it actually.) Anyway, as long as the result is valid XML, simply pretty-printing it should fall within acceptable changes.

All 2 comments

@mklement0 This sounds like a good thing to do. (I would have thought we were already doing it actually.) Anyway, as long as the result is valid XML, simply pretty-printing it should fall within acceptable changes.

Pretty printed xml is well-formed and valid, so there's no functional impact. Seems like a good idea and should be a small change.

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