Get-LJKShouldProcessStatus: Inspecting ShouldProcess Decisions in PowerShell

PowerShell functions that support -WhatIf and -Confirm rely on user input or session preferences to determine whether to perform an action. But what if your function needs to know what the user decided in a parent function or caller?

This is where Get-LJKShouldProcessStatus comes in.

Why This Is Useful

If you’ve ever written a wrapper, proxy command, or multi-layered function pipeline in PowerShell 7+, you’ve likely run into the challenge of:

• Needing to react to the user’s -WhatIf or -Confirm decision
• Having to pass confirmation status downstream to helper functions
• Wanting to introspect how a higher-level command handled ShouldProcess

By default, PowerShell does not expose a public method to retrieve this information. This function bridges that gap-albeit with some clever reflection.

Core Behavior

The function looks at the internal CommandRuntime object associated with a PSCmdlet, and inspects a non-public field called lastShouldProcessContinueStatus.

It works in one of two ways:

1. Automatically resolving the calling scope’s PSCmdlet object
2. Accepting a CmdletObject explicitly passed in

You can also specify the depth of scope to inspect with the -Scope parameter.

Usage Examples

Basic (call from a function)

# From a nested function, get the most recent decision
function Test-ConfirmFlow
{
    [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess, ConfirmImpact='High')]
    param()
    process
    {
        if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("target", "do the thing"))
        {
            # do the work
            Write-Output "Action performed."
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Output "Action skipped."
        }

        # inspect the runtime decision from this function
        $status = Get-LJKShouldProcessStatus -CmdletObject $PSCmdlet
        "Last decision: $status"
    }
}

From a helper deep in the call stack

If you call Get-LJKShouldProcessStatus from a nested helper, set the -Scope parameter to walk up scopes:

# Look two scopes up, such as from a helper called by another function
Get-LJKShouldProcessStatus -Scope 2

Passing a custom cmdlet object

If you have a PSCmdlet-derived object on hand:

# Pass in a specific Cmdlet object to inspect
Get-LJKShouldProcessStatus -CmdletObject $MyCmdlet

What the function returns

The function returns whatever value the runtime stores in its internal lastShouldProcessContinueStatus field. In practice you will most often see:

• Yes - user accepted / allowed the action
• No - user declined / suppressed the action
• NoToAll - user declined all future actions in this context
• YesToAll - user accepted all future actions in this context
• $null - no decision was recorded (e.g., no prior ShouldProcess/ShouldContinue call) or user cancelled ctrl+c

Note: exact shape / type may vary by PowerShell version; treat returned value conservatively.

Developer Notes

• It is primarily intended for advanced scripting scenarios where you need to build meta-cmdlets or complex function pipelines.
• Always ensure your functions properly declare SupportsShouldProcess in their [CmdletBinding()] attribute to enable this functionality.

When To Use It

This function is especially handy if you’re:

• Writing advanced cmdlet wrappers
• Building workflow orchestrators in PowerShell
• Designing meta-cmdlets that defer to other commands

It’s a power tool-use it wisely.