Tidy PowerShell Scripts using Here-strings

If you use PowerShell in combination with SQL Server, you no doubt have had to compose a string full of T-SQL. If you compose a query string with a lot of quotation marks and concatenation operators, it can be hard to read and even harder to edit. Here's a tip I discovered a while back that makes it much simpler. Check out the "here-string:"

Instead of this construction:

$NoisyQuery1 = 'SELECT ' 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + "columna, " 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + "columnb, " 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + "columnc  " 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + "FROM dbo.someTable " 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + "WHERE foo = foo " 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + "AND bar = bar " 
$NoisyQuery1 = $NoisyQuery1 + " etc. etc.; "

$NoisyQuery1

or this:

$NoisyQuery2 = 'SELECT ' `
  + "columna, " `
  + "columnb, " `
  + "columnc  " `
  + "FROM dbo.someTable " `
  + "WHERE foo = foo " `
  + "AND bar = bar " `
  + " etc. etc.; "

$NoisyQuery2

Try this:

$CleanerQuery = @"
  SELECT
   columna,
   columnb,
   columnc
  FROM dbo.someTable
  WHERE foo = foo
   AND bar = bar
    etc. etc.
"@

$CleanerQuery 

Better, no?

See:

http://www.johndcook.com/PowerShellCookbook.html

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692792.aspx