Send-MailMessage: Positional Parameter Error

[hojomic]

Issue Type: Bug

Run the following script with appropriate values for sender, recipient and SMTP relay:

 $from		= "\<Sender\>"
 $recipient	= "\<Recipient\>"
 $smtpRelay	= "\<SMTP Relay\>"
 $subject		= "E-mail Encryption (SMTP): Test 1"
 $body		= "Testing FuseMail SMTP..."
 Send-MailMessage –From $from –To $recipient –Subject $subject –Body $body -SmtpServer $smtpRelay -Port 25

This generates the following error:

Send-MailMessage : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument 'Testing FuseMail SMTP...'.
At C:\Users\<User>\<OneDrive>\Development\PowerShell\Scripts\Send-EmailUsingSmtpRelay.ps1:6 char:1
+ Send-MailMessage –From $from –To $recipient1 –Subject $subject  ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidArgument: (:) [Send-MailMessage], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SendMailMessage

Running the same script in the PowerShell console or PowerShell ISE works without issue.

Also note the unexpected characters '–' in the error message.

Extension version: 1.11.0
VS Code version: Code 1.31.0 (7c66f58312b48ed8ca4e387ebd9ffe9605332caa, 2019-02-05T22:35:56.624Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.17134

System Info

Item	Value
CPUs	Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz (8 x 2808)
GPU Status	2d_canvas: enabled checker_imaging: disabled_off flash_3d: enabled flash_stage3d: enabled flash_stage3d_baseline: enabled gpu_compositing: enabled multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on native_gpu_memory_buffers: disabled_software rasterization: enabled surface_synchronization: enabled_on video_decode: enabled webgl: enabled webgl2: enabled
Memory (System)	15.86GB (7.43GB free)
Process Argv
Screen Reader	no
VM	0%

[SydneyhSmith]

Thanks for reporting this @hobbsjm ! It would be really helpful in terms of diagnosing the issue if you could provide logs, instructions for how to do that are here

[rjmholt]

This looks like an encoding problem; your PowerShell session is trying to read CP-1252, but VSCode has written the file in UTF-8 without a BOM.

The simplest solution is to set "files.encoding": "utf8bom" in your VSCode settings (Ctrl+,).

The PowerShell extension can't see this or configure around it -- it's a configuration problem between the PowerShell session and VSCode, one that's fixed in PowerShell 6.

See #1744.

If you hit another issue here, please let us know below and we can look into it.

[rjmholt]

To be really sure the file is UTF-8 with BOM, you can save it with that encoding like here: microsoft/vscode#44005 (comment).