👀 Views: 21 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-06

powershell function scope variables PowerShell

I've spent hours debugging this and Can someone help me understand I've been banging my head against this for hours. Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy. I'm working with an scenario in PowerShell 7.3 where I'm trying to create a function that processes data and retains the values of certain variables between calls. I have a function that counts how many times it has been invoked, but every time I call it, the count resets to zero. I tried using `global` and `script` scopes, but it doesn't seem to work as expected. Here’s the function I’m working with: ```powershell function Increment-Count { [int]$count = 0 # Local variable, resets every call $count++ return $count } ``` When I run `Increment-Count` multiple times, I expect to see the incremented count, but I always get `1`. I tried changing the variable declaration to use `script` scope like this: ```powershell function Increment-Count { [script]$count = 0 # Attempt with script scope $count++ return $count } ``` However, this also doesn't preserve the value across calls. I also looked into using a global variable, but I prefer to avoid global state if possible. I just want a clean function that retains its state between calls without needing to make it global. Is there a way to achieve this without resorting to global variables? Could someone suggest an alternative approach to retain the count value across multiple invocations of the function? I would really appreciate any guidance on best practices for handling function scope in PowerShell. Is there a better approach? My development environment is Linux. I'm working with Powershell in a Docker container on Windows 11.