Executing Code Conversion

You can convert code by selecting it within Visual Studio Code and pressing Ctrl+Shift+P and searching for Convert to. You will have options to convert to PowerShell and convert to C#.

What to Expect

Code conversion is a difficult problem and PowerShell Pro Tools implements a solution to help with the process. Since code conversion is very specific to the syntax of both languages and the style of code, it is often very difficult to support every single scenario. PowerShell Pro Tools takes a “best effort” approach to conversion. Assume that the conversion process may have issues that need manual resolution. That said, we are looking to ever improve the conversion process.

PowerShell to C# Details

Converting PowerShell to C# syntax is relatively straight forward. There are programming constructs in both languages for conditional statements, functions, variables and .NET types. That said, there are aspects of PowerShell that do not translate one-to-one in C#.

Cmdlets

PowerShell cmdlets do not exist in C#. In order to accommodate the conversion, the PowerShell SDK will be wrapped around calls that cannot be translated. For example, if you want to convert a cmdlet like Disable-IisSecurityAuthentication, there is not currently a defined translation for that cmdlet. The resulting C# code would use the PowerShell class and AddCommand methods.

Some cmdlets do have a conversion from PowerShell to C#.

Pipeline

The pipeline is unique to PowerShell. There are ways to mimic the pipeline in C# but they are currently not implemented.

Classes

Although PowerShell now supports classes, converting them to C# is not supported at this time.

DSC Resources

Conversion from DSC resources is not supported.

C# to PowerShell Details

Just as with PowerShell to C# conversion, C# to PowerShell conversion works well for major syntactical language components.

Classes

Conversion will currently only convert the methods into PowerShell functions and not the class definition itself.

Async\Await

Conversion has no support for async\await

Generics

Conversion has no support for generics.

P\Invoke

P\Invoke signatures written in C# can be translated into PowerShell functions.