Flow Control

PowerShell flow-control statements:

Conditional Statements, Loop Statements, Break and Continue, Switch Statement.

Scripting, flow control (if-elseif-else, while loop, do-while loop, for loop, break and continue, switch)

If

If ( ) … elseif ( ) … else { }

Syntax:

if ( condition ) { commands_to_execute }

[ elseif ( condition2 ) { commands_to_execute } ]

[ else { commands_to_execute } ]

if(2 -eq 2)
{
    Write-Host "True"
}
else
{
    Write-Host "False"
}

The output of the above script will be “True”.

if(2 -eq 5)
{
    Write-Host "True"
}
else
{
    Write-Host "False"
}

The above script will print “False”.

Example of if-elseif-else :

$os = Get-WmiObject win32_operatingsystem
if ($os.Caption -match "2003")
{
	Write-Host "Windows Server 2003"
}

elseif ($os.Caption -match "2008")
{
	Write-Host "Windows Server 2008"
}

else
{
	Write-Host "Neither Windows 2003 nor Windows 2008"
}

while

Syntax
while (condition) {command_block}

$a = 1

while ($a -lt 6)
{
	Write-Host $a
	$a++
}

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do-while

Syntax:

Do { command_block } while (condition)

do
{
    Write-Host $a
    $a++
}
while ($a -le 10)

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For

Syntax
for (init; condition; repeat)
{command_block}

for($a=1; $a -le 10; $a++)
{
     Write-Host $a
}

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break

Break is used to exit a loop immediately.

Break can also be used to stop script execution when it is placed outside a loop or switch statement.

In a For, ForEach, While, Do loop or in a Switch statement you can add a break statement to exit each code block.

Example:

for($i = 1; $i -le 10; $i++)
{
    if($i -eq 5) {break}
    $i;
}

The output of the above code will be as follows:

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continue

Return to top of a program loop, skip just this iteration of the loop.

for ($i = 1; $i -le 10; $i++)
{
    if ($i -eq 5) { continue }
    $i;
}

The output of the above code will be as follows:

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Let us see how we can use continue statement for printing odd numbers from 1 to 10.

for($i = 1; $i -le 10; $i++)
{
    if($i%2 -eq 0) {continue}
    $i;
}

And here is the output:

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switch

switch ($fruit)
{
    "Apple" {echo "Apple is my favorite fruit!"; break}
    "Orange" {echo "Orange is my favorite fruit!"; break}
    "Mango" {echo "Mango is my favorite fruit!"; break}
    default {echo "This is default statement"; break}
}

The put will be as per the value of $fruit. If no value is assigned to $fruit, or not equal to any of the cases, it will print the default.