Should Write-Debug statements be left in production PowerShell code?

Question

This is one of my functions I have in a module:

Function Get-DatabaseUser
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    Param()
    Write-Verbose 'Getting database...'
    $Database = Get-Database
    Write-Debug('Value of $Database: {0}' -f $Database)

    if($Database -eq $null)
    {
        $ErrorRecord = New-ErrorRecord "Database could not be accessed." NullReferenceException 'DatabaseInaccessible' ObjectNotFound
        $PSCmdlet.ThrowTerminatingError($ErrorRecord)
    }

    Write-Verbose 'Refreshing user list...'
    $Database.Users.Refresh()

    Write-Verbose 'Getting user list...'
    $Users = $Database.Users |
                       Where-Object { $_.LoginType -eq 'WindowsUser' } |
                       Select-Object -Property Name, Login

    Write-Debug("Number of users: {0}" -f $Users.Count)

    Write-Verbose 'Writing user list to output...'
    Write-Output($Users)
}

Is there any reason to keep the Write-Debug statements in my production code, or could these statements be replaced with Write-Verbose? For example, replacing

Write-Debug("Number of users: {0}" -f $Users.Count)

with

Write-Verbose '3 users found.'

I'm not sure about the internals of PowerShell and if Write-Debug generates any significant overhead, but I'm still wondering if this has any place in a script used in production or purely for debug versions of my scripts/modules.

Answer 1

I cannot imagine that Write-Debug adds any significant overhead to a PowerShell script. Even if it did does it matter? I do not typically write scripts for performance critical operations - usually I am just trying to automate some mundane task that I am tired of doing manually. It is not going to be the end of the world if I do not squeeze every last ounce of performance out of one of my scripts.

Personally, I leave all my Write-Debug statements in my production scripts. The information that I report with Write-Debug tends to be of a different nature than the information I report with Write-Verbose so I would not want to mash the two together.