Creating sudo for PowerShell (Part 1)

In Linux shells, there’s a command called “sudo” that lets you run a command with elevated privileges. In PowerShell, you’d have to open a completely new shell with elevated privileges.

Let’s try and add a sudo command to PowerShell. We want a new command called ‘sudo’, and it should require at least a command name, but then also a variable number of white-space separated arguments. Here is how you define such a function:

function sudo 
{
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory)]
        [string]
        $FilePath,

        [Parameter(ValueFromRemainingArguments)]
        [string[]]
        $ArgumentList
    )

    $PSBoundParameters
}

The param() block defines the input parameters. $FilePath is mandatory (required). $Arguments is optional but decorated with the attribute ValueFromRemainingArguments, so it is a so-called “parameter array” and takes any input parameter that is “left over” and not assigned to any other parameter.

Run the code, then try a few use cases. $PSBoundParameters shows how the function receives your input parameters:

Here’s what I tested, and it seems to work as expected:

 
PS> sudo notepad c:\test 

Key          Value    
---          -----    
FilePath     notepad  
ArgumentList {c:\test}



PS> sudo ping 127.0.0.1 -n 1 

Key          Value             
---          -----             
FilePath     ping              
ArgumentList {127.0.0.1, -n, 1}
 

Now that the sudo function body works, in part 2 we look at the actual implantation of running commands elevated.

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