I'm using a ternary expression as shown in this example:
$a = 1 $x = if ($a -eq 1) { "one" } else {"not one" } $t = "The answer is: " + $x write-host $t This works as I would expect. What I would like to do in my real situation though, is to assign directly to $t without the intermediate step of first assigning the expression to $x, as if I could do this:
$a = 1 $t = "The answer is: " + (if ($a -eq 1) { "one" } else {"not one" }) write-host $t However, I get an error on the assignment line,
if : The term 'if' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. At line:1 char:31 + $t = "The answer is: " + (if ($a -eq 1) { "one" } else {"not one" ... + ~~ + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (if:String) [], CommandNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException (I've tried with an without the (...) brackets: same error.) Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but my google-fu isn't helping today. I can see how to concatenate constants and variables, but nothing seems to explain how to concatenate constants and expressions.
Can you point me in the right direction, please?
1 Answer
You're so close. :)
You need to use the $ to declare the statement's return value as a variable.
So:
$a = 1 $t = "The answer is: " + $(if ($a -eq 1) { "one" } else { "not one" }) write-host $t Or perhaps as two lines, utilizing Write-Host's formatting options:
$a = 1 write-host ("{0} {1}" -f "The answer is:", $(if ($a -eq 1) { "one" } else { "not one" })) 
