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`PSPossibleIncorrectUsageOfAssignmentOperator` fires when assigning value inside `if($())`

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#2,048 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
csharp, powershell
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start with the provided Invoke-ScriptAnalyzer reproduction and the PSPossibleIncorrectUsageOfAssignmentOperator rule. Trace how the nested if($()) expression is analyzed, then check existing rule coverage for a regression case. Done means the reproduction no longer reports this false positive and existing analyzer checks still pass.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Resolution - By Design

Before submitting a bug report:

  • Make sure you are able to repro it on the latest released version
  • Perform a quick search for existing issues to check if this bug has already been reported

Steps to reproduce

Invoke-ScriptAnalyzer -ScriptDefinition (
    [scriptblock]::Create{
        if (
            [bool]$(Try{$null=[datetime]('2024-11-12T09:44:00Z');$?}Catch{$false})
        ) {
            Write-Output -InputObject 'Could be parsed as datetime'
        }
        else {
            Write-Output -InputObject 'Could not be parsed as datetime'
        }
    }.ToString()
) -IncludeRule 'PSPossibleIncorrectUsageOfAssignmentOperator' | Format-List

Expected behavior

Actual behavior

RuleName : PSPossibleIncorrectUsageOfAssignmentOperator
Severity : Warning
Line     : 3
Column   : 30
Message  : Did you mean to use the assignment operator '='? The equality operator in PowerShell is 'eq'.

If an unexpected error was thrown then please report the full error details using e.g. $error[0] | Select-Object *

Environment data

PS > $PSVersionTable

Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      7.4.6
PSEdition                      Core
GitCommitId                    7.4.6
OS                             Microsoft Windows 10.0.26100
Platform                       Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion              3.0

PS > (Get-Module -ListAvailable PSScriptAnalyzer).Version | ForEach-Object { $_.ToString() }

1.23.0

PS >
Dominant language
C#
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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