Right click paste should work mostly like Ctrl+v paste

[lzybkr]

There are various complaints about the right click to paste behavior - all of which are non-issues with Ctrl+v paste.

This includes:

• Accepting input before the "paste" is done (Beta.9 - Module PSReadLine impacting ifelse block structure #575)
• "paste" with \n comes in reverse (Right-click paste with \n comes out upside down? #496)
• carriage return not honored (Carriage return (enter key or line break) from clipboard text (when pasted) is not honored in Powershell #417 CRLF is printing ^M #245)
• tab completion happens when it shouldn't (File name inserted into paste input #77)
• pasting is slow (Copy-paste of large body of code can't be interrupted #37)

The fix for this should also address #290 by checking if the input is "complete" after a newline, though it should check if the last statement could be continued even if it is complete, e.g. if w/o an else or try without a finally.

[Tadas]

So I mentioned capturing mouse events and I came up with this PoC https://github.com/Tadas/PSReadLine/tree/MouseHook

Basically this installs a global Windows event hook to capture right clicks. It looks for ones going to our console window, makes sure that the click was in the client area and if we're in quick edit mode calls PSConsoleReadLine.Paste() directly while suppressing the event.

With some more hackery I think it would be possible to intercept Paste action from the context menu.

[lzybkr]

Interesting approach.

I'm not interested in taking a dependency on System.Windows.Forms - I used it for clipboard support but removed the dependency to work as a netstandard2 assembly. I haven't switched the build over though because it gets unnecessarily messy with unnecessary assemblies in the build output directory.

I'm also a bit concerned about ensuring UnhookWindowsHookEx is always called, e.g. I have some code that should be running when PowerShell exits but it doesn't seem to happen, see #262.

[lzybkr]

One other thing - ideally we can fix this on every platform, not just Windows. The heuristic approach should work cross-platform, but I'm open to more reliable approaches like yours if there is a solution for the various non-Windows platforms as well.

[MaximoTrinidad]

FYI

This issue still persist on PowerShell Core 6 RC.
:)

[lzybkr]

@MaximoTrinidad - PSReadLine has always worked this way and it is a little different than without PSReadLine. It wasn't much of a problem because Ctrl+v is preferred - it is way faster and characters like Tab don't get expanded incorrectly.

Now this problem is more annoying on PowerShell Core because the port that the PowerShell team did not support the clipboard. My port does, so when PSReadLine 2.0 is widely available, I'll continue to recommend folks use Ctrl+v instead of right click.

That said, it would be nice to see this fixed at some point.

[MaximoTrinidad]

Hum! Interesting.

They force me to close my incident about the issue with the If-Else block not working after pasting it into PowerShell Core as it breaks at the "else".

I just tried using Ctrl-V and it do nothing. In the other hand, doing the right-click on the mouse works.

My issue wasn't really the pasting of the code. The If-Else should work with both structure:

PowerShell v6.0.0-rc
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

https://aka.ms/pscore6-docs
Type 'help' to get help.

PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc> # the following code block will break:
PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc> $m = "max"; if($m -eq "elaine")
>> {
>>   "Its elaine!!"
>> }
PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc> else
else : The term 'else' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ else
+ ~~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (else:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc> {
>>  "Its not elaine"
>> }

 "Its not elaine"

PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc> # the following code block will execute:
PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc> $m = "max"; if ($m -eq "elaine")
>> {
>> "Its elaine!!"
>> }else{
>> "Its not elaine"
>> }
Its not elaine
PS C:\Program Files\PowerShell\6.0.0-rc>

I know if I remove the module then is works as expected.
:)

[lzybkr]

As I said, Ctrl+v works in Windows PowerShell, but you need PSReadLine 2.0 (no official builds available yet) for PowerShell Core.

And I fully understand the problem, you don't need to keep repeating yourself.

Without PSReadLine, if there is multi-line input, you must enter a single blank line before the input is accepted.

With PSReadLine, if the input is "complete", as in, it parses without an IncompleteParseException, then the input will be accepted without that extra blank line.

So PSReadLine is just different and that's not changing. If you aren't pasting, you use Shift+Enter when you know you're not done - this way you can enter your else without PSReadLine accepting the input.

When you paste, you can't use Shift+Enter, so the input might get accepted before you wanted.

This issue is to attempt to emulate Ctrl+v when you right click paste so that the experience is better, but I do not plan on requiring a blank line to accept multi-line input.