The Information stream is PowerShell’s sixth output stream, introduced in PowerShell 5, for informational messages intended for display or related handling. Unlike ordinary pipeline output, it is designed for structured messages that can be displayed, suppressed, captured, tagged, or searched. section 13.4 section 13.6
Control informational output with these mechanisms:
- Use Write-Information with a message and optional tags such as status, notice, process, meta, or data. section 13.4 section 13.4.1
- Use -InformationAction Continue to display messages, or SilentlyContinue to suppress display while retaining captured records. section 13.4 section 13.4.1
- Use -InformationVariable to collect information records without cluttering normal command output, then filter them by tags. section 13.4 section 13.4.1
- Prefer Write-Information over Write-Host for tool messages; reserve host-oriented commands for deliberately human-interactive tools. section 18.9
Capture and filter tagged messages
A function can emit status and notice messages, run it with Example -InformationAction Continue -InformationVariable x, and later select only records whose Tags contain notice. Captured records expose MessageData, Tags, timestamps, process information, and host metadata. section 13.4 section 13.4.1
Function Example {
[CmdletBinding()]
Param()
Write-Information "First message" -tag status
Write-Information "Note that this had no parameters" -tag notice
Write-Information "Second message" -tag status
}
Example -InformationAction Continue -InformationVariable x
Use this compact function to see tagged status and notice messages, then compare visible output with captured information records. section 13.4
