How do I concatenate strings and variables in PowerShell

Question

Suppose I have the following snippet   assoc   New-Object PSObject -Property        Id   42     Name    quot Slim Shady quot      Owner    quot Eminem quot     Write-Host  assoc Id    quot   -   quot      assoc Name    quot   -   quot     assoc Owner  I d expect this snippet to show   42 - Slim Shady - Eminem  But instead it shows   42     -     Slim Shady     -     Eminem  Which makes me think the   operator isn t appropriate for concatenating strings and variables  How should you approach this with PowerShell

User · Answer

As noted elsewhere  you can use join  If you are using commands as inputs  as I was   use the following syntax  -join   Command1    quot   quot      Command2    This would result in the two outputs separated by a comma  See https   stackoverflow com a 34720515 11012871 for related comment

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I just want to bring another way to do this using  NET String Format    name    Slim Shady  Write-Host   string   Format  My name is  0     name

User · Answer

I seem to struggle with this  and many other unintuitive things  every time I use PowerShell after time away from it  so I now opt for    string   Concat  There are     count    items in the list

User · Answer

There is a difference between single and double quotes   I am using PowerShell 4   You can do this  as Benjamin said    name    Slim Shady  Write-Host  My name is  name - gt  My name is Slim Shady  Or you can do this   name    Slim Shady  Write-Host  quot My name is  name quot  - gt  My name is Slim Shady  The single quotes are for literal  output the string exactly like this  please  The double quotes are for when you want some pre-processing done  such as variables  special characters  etc   So   name    quot Marshall Bruce Mathers III quot  Write-Host  quot  name quot  - gt  Marshall Bruce Mathers III  Whereas   name    quot Marshall Bruce Mathers III quot  Write-Host   name  - gt   name   I find How-to  Escape characters  Delimiters and Quotes good for reference

User · Answer

If you re concatenating strings to build file paths  use the Join-Path command  Join-Path C  temp  quot MyNewFolder quot   It ll automatically add the appropriate trailing   leading slashes for you  which makes things a lot easier

User · Answer

Write-Host can concatenate like this too    Write-Host  assoc Id  -   assoc Name  -   assoc Owner   This is the simplest way  IMHO

User · Answer

Try wrapping whatever you want to print out in parentheses  Write-Host   assoc Id    quot   -   quot      assoc Name    quot   -   quot     assoc Owner   Your code is being interpreted as many parameters being passed to Write-Host  Wrapping it up inside parentheses will concatenate the values and then pass the resulting value as a single parameter

User · Answer

From What To Do   Not to Do in PowerShell  Part 1    id    assoc Id  name    assoc Name  owner    assoc owner   id -  name -  owner

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While expression   quot string1 quot     quot string2 quot     quot string3 quot   will concatenate the string  you need to put a   in front of the parenthesis to make it evaluate as a single argument when passed to a PowerShell command  Example  Write-Host     quot string1 quot     quot string2 quot     quot string3 quot     As a bonus  if you want it to span multiple lines  then you need to use the awkward backtick syntax at the end of the line  without any spaces or characters to the right of the backtick   Example  Write-Host          quot The rain in  quot                 quot Spain falls mainly  quot          quot in the plains quot               -ForegroundColor Yellow   Actually  I think PowerShell is currently implemented a little bit wrong by requiring unnecessary backticks between parentheses  If Microsoft would just follow Python or Tcl parenthesis rules of allowing you to put as many newlines as you want between the starting and ending parenthesis then they would solve most of the problems that people don t like about PowerShell related to line continuation  and concatenation of strings  I ve found that you can leave the backticks off sometimes on line continuations between parenthesis  but it s really flaky and unpredictable if it will work    It s better to just add the backticks

User · Answer

You can also get access to C   NET methods  and the following also works    string1    Slim Shady     string2    The real slim shady    concatString    System String   Concat  string1   string2   Output   Slim Shady  The real slim shady

User · Answer

Just for the fun  You can also access the values of the PSObject directly like below   assoc psobject Properties value -join  quot  -  quot   But if you do not specify that the object should be ordered  PowerShell will display the values in a random order  So you should add the flag  ordered    assoc    pscustomobject   ordered         Id   42     Name    quot Slim Shady quot      Owner    quot Eminem quot

User · Answer

Current PowerShell version 5 1 17134 407  This also works as of now   myVar    quot Hello quot   echo  quot   myVar  World quot   Note  this only works with double quotes

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Write-Host     assoc Id  -    assoc Name  -    assoc Owner     See the Windows PowerShell Language Specification Version 3 0  p34  sub-expressions expansion

User · Answer

One way is  Write-Host  quot    assoc Id   -     assoc Name   -     assoc Owner  quot   Another one is  Write-Host    quot  0   -   1   -   2  quot  -f  assoc Id  assoc Name  assoc Owner    Or just  but I don t like it       Write-Host  assoc Id   quot   -   quot     assoc Name   quot   -   quot    assoc Owner

User · Answer

Another option is   string    assoc ID  string     quot  -  quot   string     assoc Name  string     quot  -  quot   string     assoc Owner Write-Host  string  The  quot best quot  method is probably the one C B  suggested  Write-Host  quot    assoc Id   -     assoc Name   -     assoc Owner  quot

User · Answer

These answers all seem very complicated  If you are using this in a PowerShell script you can simply do this    name    Slim Shady  Write-Host  My name is  name   It will output     My name is Slim Shady   Note how a space is put between the words for you

User · Answer

Here is another way as an alternative  Write-Host   quot   0   -   1   -   2  quot  -f  assoc Id   assoc Name   assoc Owner

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You need to place the expression in parentheses to stop them being treated as different parameters to the cmdlet  Write-Host   assoc Id    quot   -   quot      assoc Name    quot   -   quot     assoc Owner

User · Answer

Concatenate strings just like in the DOS days  This is a big deal for logging so here you go    strDate   Get-Date  strday       strDate Year    strDate Month    strDate Day    Write-Output     strDate Year    strDate Month    strDate Day   Write-Output  strday

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assoc          Id   34     FirstName    quot John quot      LastName    quot Doe quot      Owner    quot Wife quot      assocId    assoc Id  assocFN    assoc FirstName  assocLN    assoc LastName  assocName    assocFN   assocLN -Join  quot   quot   assocOwner    assoc Owner   assocJoin    assocId   assocName   assocOwner -join  quot  -  quot   assocJoin  Output   34 - John Doe - Wife

User · Answer

You can also use -join E g   var   -join  quot Hello quot    quot   quot    quot world quot     Would assign  quot Hello world quot  to  var  So to output  in one line  Write-Host  -join  quot Hello quot    quot   quot    quot world quot

[powershell] How do I concatenate strings and variables in PowerShell?

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