powershell 2.0 try catch how to access the exception

Question

This is the try catch in PowerShell 2.0

$urls = "http://www.google.com", "http://none.greenjump.nl", "http://www.nu.nl"
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient 

foreach($url in $urls)
{
    try
    {
        $url
        $result=$wc.DownloadString($url)
    }
    catch [System.Net.WebException]
    {
        [void]$fails.Add("url webfailed $url")
    }  
}

but what I want to do is something like in c#

catch( WebException ex)
{
    Log(ex.ToString());
}

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Try something like this:

try {
    $w = New-Object net.WebClient
    $d = $w.downloadString('http://foo')
}
catch [Net.WebException] {
    Write-Host $_.Exception.ToString()
}

The exception is in the $_ variable. You might explore $_ like this:

try {
    $w = New-Object net.WebClient
    $d = $w.downloadString('http://foo')
}
catch [Net.WebException] {
    $_ | fl * -Force
}

I think it will give you all the info you need.

My rule: if there is some data that is not displayed, try to use -force.