How to throw a catchable error that displays concisely

Question

I'd like to throw an error from a custom cmdlet that

1. Is script-terminating, causing any script it is part of to terminate (unless caught)
2. Displays concisely if shown in a terminal, without a stack trace

So far I have tried:

Description (with screenshot)	Script-terminating	Concise	Catchable
throw statement on a naked string.	✅ Yes	❌ No	✅ Yes
The $PSCmdlet.ThrowTerminatingError method.	❌ No	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
The Write-Error cmdlet.	❌ No (nor statement-terminating)	✅ Yes	❌ No

Note that my cmdlet should be usable from scripts not controlled by me too - that is, the behavior shouldn't require setting preference variables if doing so would affect the running script.

Is there any way to throw a concise/informative error from a cmdlet?

Answer 1

The only way for a throw statement to generate a single-line error message without a location message - assuming that the $ErrorView preference variable is at its (PowerShell (Core)) default, 'Concise' - is:

• You must be running PowerShell (Core) 7+ (as your tags incidate) rather than the legacy Windows PowerShell edition...

• ... and the (cmdlet-like) function that uses throw must originate from a (persisted)^[1] PowerShell module.

Caveats:

• Unlike when you use $PSCmdlet.ThrowTerminatingError() (which only generates a statement-terminating error, however), the exception message will be prefixed generically with Exception: rather than the function name.
  This applies up to at least PowerShell 7.3.7 (current as of this writing).

• By using throw, your cmdlet-like function will exhibit nonstandard behavior, given that binary cmdlets (those compiled into .NET assemblies) can not generate script-terminating errors, only statement-terminating ones.

---

^{[1] Curiously, this does not apply to dynamic modules created via New-Module}