Operators

Operators and expressions – Arithmetic, assignment, comparison, pattern matching logical and bit wise operators

PowerShell provides a variety of operators to perform operations on values and variables. Here's a list of common operators in PowerShell, grouped by their function:

Arithmetic operators:

+: Addition
-: Subtraction
*: Multiplication
/: Division
%: Modulus (remainder of division)

Assignment operators:

=: Assign a value to a variable
+=: Add and assign (increment)
-=: Subtract and assign (decrement)
*=: Multiply and assign
/=: Divide and assign
%=: Modulus and assign

Comparison operators:

-eq: Equal to
-ne: Not equal to
-gt: Greater than
-ge: Greater than or equal to
-lt: Less than
-le: Less than or equal to

Logical operators:

-and: Logical AND
-or: Logical OR
-not or !: Logical NOT
-xor: Logical exclusive OR

Bitwise operators:

-band: Bitwise AND
-bor: Bitwise OR
-bnot: Bitwise NOT
-bxor: Bitwise exclusive OR
-shl: Bitwise shift left
-shr: Bitwise shift right

Redirection operators:

>: Redirect output to a file (overwrite)
>>: Redirect output to a file (append)
2>: Redirect error output to a file (overwrite)
2>>: Redirect error output to a file (append)

Pipeline operator:

|: Pass the output of one command as input to another command

String operators:

-join: Concatenate elements of an array into a single string
-split: Split a string into an array based on a delimiter
-replace: Replace a pattern in a string with a specified value
-match: Test if a string matches a regular expression pattern
-notmatch: Test if a string does not match a regular expression pattern

Type operators:

-is: Test if a value is of a specific type
-isnot: Test if a value is not of a specific type
-as: Attempt to cast a value to a specific type

These operators allow you to perform various operations on values and variables in PowerShell, enabling you to create more complex scripts and commands. For a complete list of PowerShell operators and their descriptions, consult the official PowerShell documentation.

Examples:

Comparision Operators:

PS C:\> 2 -eq 2
True
PS C:\> 2 -eq 3
False
PS C:\> 2 -ne 3
True
PS C:\> 2 -ne 2
False

PowerShell operators are by default not case sensitive.

PS C:> "PowerShell" -eq "PowerShell"
True
PS C:> "PowerShell" -eq "POWERSHELL"
True

If you want to make case sensitive, then we have to use -ceq.

PS C:> "PowerShell" -ceq "POWERSHELL"
False
PS C:> 10 -gt 10
False
PS C:> 10 -gt 11
False
PS C:> 100 -gt 10
True
PS C:> 10 -gt 100
False
PS C:> 10 -ge 10
True
PS C:> 100 -ge 10
True
PS C:> 10 -lt 100
True
PS C:> 100 -lt 10
False
PS C:> 10 -le 100
True
PS C:> 100 -le 10
False
PS C:>

String Operators:

PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -like "Windows"
False
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -like "Windows*"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -like "*Server2012"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -like "*Server*"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -match "Server"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -match "2012"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -match "Windows"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -cmatch "Windows"
True
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -cmatch "WINDOWS"
False
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -notmatch "WINDOWS"
False
PS C:\> "WindowsServer2012" -cnotmatch "WINDOWS"
True

Containment Operators:

PS C:\> "abc", "def" -Contains "def"
True
PS C:\> "Windows", "PowerShell" -Contains "Shell"
False
PS C:\> "Windows", "PowerShell" -Contains "*Shell"
False

Replacement:

PS C:\> $a = "Windows Server 2012"

PS C:\> $a -replace "2012","2016"
Windows Server 2016

Type Comparison:

PS C:\> 123 -is [int]
True

PS C:\> "Red" -is [string]
True

PS C:\> $a = 1,2,3,4,5
PS C:\> $a -is [array]
True