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Tables as tables, not text #28328
Description
Summary of the new feature / enhancement
Have PowerShell support writing real tables, rather then using plain char shapes to form the shape of a table.
Proposed technical implementation details (optional)
OpenCode has something nice - a table is... a table. So it is possible to mark all the rows in a cell of that table, and copy it cleanly.
In PowerShell on the other hand, tables created by agents are just visual representation of text forming shape of a table - so marking rows in a cell makes that marking to also mark other rows and areas outside the cell, and not just the value of the cell.
Activity
doctordns commentedon Nov 4, 2026
I am not sure how this could work.
Format-Tableformats an array as a table. Are you suggesting tables to be a new Type? If so, wouldn't it be appropriate to add this into .Net?ziv-couponroller commentedon Nov 4, 2026
Thanks, and you're right that this doesn't belong in PowerShell - I did some more digging and apparently the tables are drawn by the agent CLI (Claude Code, Codex, etc.), not by Format-Table.
So its not a Powershell or .NET limitation.
OpenCode can select per cell because it's a full TUI that captures the mouse and handles selection itself. In a regular console, the terminal does the selecting and only sees a grid of characters, with no way for an app to mark "this is a cell".
doctordns commentedon Nov 4, 2026
Just to clarify,
Format-Tablein Powershell does not make use of Claude or any othet Ai tool.Format-Tableis part of PowerShell’s intetnal formatting subsystem. It converts objects or more usually arrays of objects into human-readable table output. Its behaviour is entirely rule‑based and predictable and so far as I can tell is AI-slop free.