Contains, like, and match operators Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting

You also are given an opportunity to use a variable name that explains what it is that you are really checking. This is also and example of self documenting code that saves unnecessary comments. We can take that statement out of the if statement and only check the result. There is still a lot going on there, but placing each piece on its own line makes a big difference. I generally only do this when I get more than two comparisons or if I have to scroll to the right to read any of the ligic.

• Also make note of how the syntax works for these operators.
• For example, -contains is used to find the process “powershell” in a list of processes.
• Since you just learned about using the eq operator to find instances in arrays, let’s take that a step further and introduce the “containment” operators.

The -not operator flips an expression from $false to $true or from $true to $false. Here is an example where we want to perform an action when Test-Path is $false. jar for java mobile phone apps free download The first thing the if statement does is evaluate the expression in parentheses. If it evaluates to $true, then it will executes the scriptblock in the braces.

When you would like to see if two strings are the same, you can make use of the equals operator. He is a multi-year recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award in Windows PowerShell. He works today as an independent author, trainer and consultant. Jeff has written for numerous online sites and print publications, is a contributing editor at Petri.com, and a frequent speaker at technology conferences and user groups.

The -Like and -NotLike comparison operators should allow for an array of values

Understanding the range of PowerShell operators and how they’re used can help you build efficient and effective code. Operators offer ways to string together complex expressions in PowerShell. To split and join strings to PowerShell, the -split and -join operators are used. These two operators are very commonly used in PowerShell scripts because this type of operation is necessary to manipulate strings.

In your tests, you can mock the call to Test-ADDriveConfiguration and you only need two tests for this function. One where it returns $true and one where it returns $false. Testing the other function will be simpler because it is so small. There three possible values that can match the $itemType. In this case, it will match with Role and the is a role would get executed. I used a very simple example just to give you some exposure to the switch operator.

There is automatic variable called “matches” element which return the match elements. To nest if/else statements you must use the keyword elseif, which must have a condition specified . You can nest blocks of if/else statements, depending on your particular use case, so we will be checking how to do it in PowerShell. The obvious downside is that it is so much more code to write. The code is more complex to look at as it takes a single line of logic and explodes it into 25 or more lines. It is inevitable that you run into a situation that has way too many comparisons to check and your if statement scrolls way off the right side of the screen.

The if statement allows you to specify an action for not only when the statement is $true, but also for when it is $false. So if both items are $false or both items are $true, then the whole expression is $false. Another way to look at this is the expression is only $true when the results of the expression 6 Best Places to Hire WordPress Developers are different. The -or allows for you to specify two expressions and returns $true if either one of them is $true. So a value is returned by your operator, then the whole statement is $true. Your scripts will often need to make decisions and perform different logic based on those decisions.

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting – Second Edition by Chris Dent, Brenton J.W. Blawat

These operators are used when checking to see if a value is larger or smaller than another value. The -gt -ge -lt -le stand for GreaterThan, GreaterThanOrEqual, LessThan, and LessThanOrEqual. Use this to make sure that the action only executes if the value is not 5.

In the above example, notice how eq returned a boolean True value above even when the string wasn’t the exact same. This behavior happens because the eq operator is case-insensitive. To test for case-sensitive equality, use the ceq operator. The ceq operator is the exact same as eq with the exception of being case-sensitive. Let’s say you assign a string to a variable called $string.

• Like all modern scripting languages, PowerShell supports if/else, switch, and the corresponding comparison operators.
• The -contains, -like, and -match operators are very similar in function.
• You are able to check a value’s type with the -is operator.
• The if and else statements take a script block, so we can place any PowerShell command inside them, including another if statement.
• The operators we’re going to cover in this chapter are shown in figure 4.1.
• If the values are not equal, this operator returns the Boolean value TRUE, otherwise False.

The -eq does an equality check between two values to make sure they are equal to each other. See theabout_Comparision_Operatorshelp topic to learn more about the PowerShell like operator. The characters listed in theabout_Wildcardshelp topic have special meaning when used on the right side of the like operator. If they’re used on the left side of the like operator, they’re literals and have no special meaning.

Case-Insensitive Equals (-eq)

While they all compare data, they all have their own purpose in your scripts. This means that when you are searching for items using these operators, they will match all instances of the value in the expression. In instances where you need the search to be case-specific, you can append c in front of the operator to force case sensitivity. To force case insensitivity, you can also append i in front of the operator. Similar to the PowerShell like operator, match and it’s opposite counterpart, notmatch, compares two strings return a boolean True or False value.

If the value was $false, then it would skip over that scriptblock. Like many other languages, PowerShell has statements for conditionally https://cryptonews.wiki/ executing code in your scripts. Today we will take a deep dive into one of the most fundamental commands in PowerShell.

Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting by Brenton J.W. Blawat

If $Debug is true, then those values fall into the $snowSqlParam in the correct place. In this example, we check the $path to make sure it is a file. Having a no result or a $null value evaluates to $false in the if statement. When checking specifically for $null, it is a best practice to place the $null on the left hand side. When you do that, both sides need to be $true for the whole expression to be $true. I’ll group these types together when I list variations for other operators.

If we input scalar value, comparison operators return a Boolean value. When the input is a collection of values, the comparison operators return any matching values. If there are no matches found in a collection then the comparison operators do not return anything. In PowerShell, comparison operators are commonly used to compare conditions for equality, matching, containment, and replacement.

A simple example is the following snippet, which replaces the string this with that. Note the first parameter after -replace is the value to find and the second is the value to replace it with. In this article, I’ll go over the most common operators along with various examples of how they can be used. For further reading, take a look at the Microsoft help page too.

A string on the left and another string with wildcards on the right. If it matches, true is returned otherwise if it doesn’t match, false is returned. The equality operators are those operators, which check the equality of two values and also check that one value is greater or less than other value.

These operators help us to find, test, compare, modify, and replace the data and information. The operator -notlike returns boolean True if no match found and False if there is a match. In case of using against a collection, it will return all other values that don’t match the pattern given on the right side of the -notlike operator. Adding case sensitivity to the pattern, use -cnotlike operator. Typically, the eq and ceq operators are used for scalar or single values like strings, integers and boolean values. But these operators can also find instances of particular values contained within a collection like an array.

This post explained how to use the like operator in PowerShell Where-Object with the help of some suitable examples. The matching operator -like finds elements that match or do not match a specified pattern. The -like operator also allows you to compare the contents of two string objects in PowerShell and returns a Boolean value, True or False.

Use this when the wildcard patterns are not flexible enough for you. Now you would expect that the example above would return true, because every Windows system has a W32Time service, but it doesn’t… why? Well because we are attempting to find an object based on a single property, name. It compares every single property of the object and if all of them are the same then it returns True, else it will return false. However, if you want to use wildcards along the lines of -like, the comparison will fail because wildcards are not supported.

As with most languages, there is the ability to use if else statements. In this article we will look at how to use if/else statements along with how to use the switch statement in PowerShell. There some operators in PowerShell that let you wrap you command to the next line. The logical operators -and and -or are good operators to use if you want to break your expression into multiple lines. If that is $false, then it moves down to the next elseif or else in the list. That last else is the default action to take if none of the others return $true.