Powershell Start-Process to start Powershell session and pass local variables

powershell start-process scriptblock
atownson picture atownson · Jul 21, 2013 · Viewed 14.5k times · Source

Is there a way to use the Powershell Start-Process cmdlet to start a new Powershell session and pass a scriptblock with local variables (once of which will be an array)?

Example:

$Array = @(1,2,3,4)

$String = "This is string number"

$Scriptblock = {$Array | ForEach-Object {Write-Host $String $_}}

Start-Process Powershell -ArgumentList "$Scriptblock"

Thanks.

Answer

Adi Inbar picture Adi Inbar · Jul 21, 2013

I'm pretty sure there's no direct way to pass variables from one PowerShell session to another. The best you can do is some workaround, like declaring the variables in the code you pass in -ArgumentList, interpolating the values in the calling session. How you interpolate the variables into the declarations in -ArgumentList depends on what types of variables. For an array and a string you could do something like this:

$command = '<contents of your scriptblock without the curly braces>'

Start-Process powershell -ArgumentList ("`$Array = echo $Array; `$String = '$String';" + $command)

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