silent failure pwsh -c "{hi"

Steps to reproduce

PS> pwsh -c '{hi'
PS> pwsh -c '}hi'
ParserError:
Line |
   1 |  }hi
     |  ~
     | Unexpected token '}' in expression or statement.
PS>

Expected behavior

I expect both pwsh invocations to report an error.

Actual behavior

The first pwsh invocation exits with failure status but doesn’t report any error.

Environment data

Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      7.1.0
PSEdition                      Core
GitCommitId                    7.1.0
OS                             Microsoft Windows 10.0.19042
Platform                       Win32NT
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0…}
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1
WSManStackVersion              3.0

[doctordns]

Try:

pwsh -c "'}hi'"

[mklement0]

@iSazonov, no, it’s not related to quoting (argument parsing); what the CLI sees verbatim as the -c argument after argument parsing in this case is {hi, which it parses and executes as PowerShell code, which should therefore result in a syntax (parser) error, just like withInvoke-Expression '{hi'

As @felix9’s counter example in the OP implies, the problem must be related to parsing something as a script block, given that something that doesn’t look like a script block, such as pwsh -c '}hi', properly reports a syntax error.

---

Pragmatically speaking, something like pwsh -c '{get-date}' doesn’t make sense, because the script block is merely created, not executed, causing its verbatim contents to be merely echoed, but the problem also occurs when you prepend & to effect execution:

# Equally broken: also fails silently
pwsh -c '& {get-date'

As an aside: Of course, even pwsh -c '& {get-date}' is unnecessary, given that there’s never a need to construct a script block explicitly, given that the whole -c argument is implicitly a script block (pwsh -c 'get-date' will do).