Ternary operator in PowerShell

Question

From what I know  PowerShell doesn t seem to have a built-in expression for the so-called ternary operator   For example  in the C language  which supports the ternary operator  I could write something like    lt condition gt     lt condition-is-true gt     lt condition-is-false gt     If that doesn t really exist in PowerShell  what would be the best way  i e  easy to read and to maintain  to accomplish the same result

User · Answer

As of PowerShell version 7  the ternary operator is built into PowerShell  1 -gt 2    quot Yes quot     quot No quot    Returns  quot No quot   1 -gt 2    Yes     null   Get a  null response for false-y return value

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Here s an alternative custom function approach   function Test-TernaryOperatorCondition        CmdletBinding        param            Parameter ValueFromPipeline    true  Mandatory    true            bool  ConditionResult                    Parameter Mandatory    true  Position   0            PSObject  ValueIfTrue                    Parameter Mandatory    true  Position   1            ValidateSet                char  Colon                    Parameter Mandatory    true  Position   2            PSObject  ValueIfFalse           process           if   ConditionResult                 ValueIfTrue                   else                ValueIfFalse                   set-alias -Name       -Value  Test-TernaryOperatorCondition    Example  1 -eq 1       match     nomatch  1 -eq 2       match     nomatch    Differences Explained   Why is it 3 question marks instead of 1    The   character is already an alias for Where-Object     is used in other languages as a null coalescing operator  and I wanted to avoid confusion   Why do we need the pipe before the command    Since I m utilising the pipeline to evaluate this  we still need this character to pipe the condition into our function  What happens if I pass in an array    We get a result for each value  i e  -2  2       match     nomatch  gives  match  match  nomatch  match  match  i e  since any non-zero int evaluates to true  whilst zero evaluates to false   If you don t want that  convert the array to a bool    bool  -2  2         match     nomatch   or simply   bool  -2  2        match     nomatch

User · Answer

Since I have used this many times already and didn t see it listed here  I ll add my piece     var      true  this is true   false  this is false   1 -eq 1   ugliest of all    kinda source

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The closest PowerShell construct I ve been able to come up with to emulate that is       condition is false     condition is true     condition

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Try powershell s switch statement as an alternative  especially for variable assignment - multiple lines  but readable    Example    WinVer   switch   Test-Path  Env windir SysWOW64        true       64-bit       false      32-bit       This version of Windows is  WinVer

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Per this PowerShell blog post  you can create an alias to define a    operator   set-alias    Invoke-Ternary -Option AllScope -Description  PSCX filter alias  filter Invoke-Ternary   scriptblock  decider   scriptblock  ifTrue   scriptblock  ifFalse        if   amp  decider            amp  ifTrue      else           amp  ifFalse           Use it like this    total     quantity    price            quantity -le 10    9    75

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I ve recently improved  open PullRequest  the ternary conditional and null-coalescing operators in the PoweShell lib  Pscx  Pls have a look for my solution    My github topic branch  UtilityModule Invoke-Operators    Functions   Invoke-Ternary Invoke-TernaryAsPipe Invoke-NullCoalescing NullCoalescingAsPipe   Aliases  Set-Alias       Pscx Invoke-Ternary                     -Description  PSCX alias  Set-Alias       Pscx Invoke-TernaryAsPipe               -Description  PSCX alias  Set-Alias       Pscx Invoke-NullCoalescing              -Description  PSCX alias  Set-Alias       Pscx Invoke-NullCoalescingAsPipe        -Description  PSCX alias    Usage   lt condition expression gt       lt true expression gt   lt false expression gt    lt variable expression gt       lt alternate expression gt    As expression you can pass               null  a literal  a variable  an  external  expression   b -eq 4  or a scriptblock   b -eq 4    If a variable in the variable expression is  null or not existing  the alternate expression is evaluated as output

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result   If   condition    true   Else   false     Everything else is incidental complexity and thus to be avoided   For use in or as an expression  not just an assignment  wrap it in      thus   write-host    If   condition    true   Else   false

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If you re just looking for a syntactically simple way to assign return a string or numeric based on a boolean condition  you can use the multiplication operator like this    Condition is     true   condition    false    condition   12 34  condition   56 78   condition    If you re only ever interested in the result when something is true  you can just omit the false part entirely  or vice versa   e g  a simple scoring system    isTall    true  isDark    false  isHandsome    true   score    2  isTall   4  isDark   10  isHandsome   Score    score    or    Score      2  isTall   4  isDark   10  isHandsome      Note that the boolean value should not be the leading term in the multiplication  i e   condition  true  etc  won t work

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Powershell 7 has it   https   toastit dev 2019 09 25 ternary-operator-powershell-7   PS C  Users js gt  0    yes     no  no PS C  Users js gt  1    yes     no  yes

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I too  looked for a better answer  and while the solution in Edward s post is  ok   I came up with a far more natural solution in this blog post  Short and sweet     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------   Name    Invoke-Assignment   Alias       Author  Garrett Serack   FearTheCowboy    Desc    Enables expressions like the C  operators             Ternary                  lt condition gt     lt trueresult gt     lt falseresult gt                 e g                    status    age  gt  50     old     young             Null-Coalescing                 lt value gt      lt value-if-value-is-null gt                e g                   name   GetName       No Name                    Ternary Usage               status      age  gt  50     old     young      Null Coalescing Usage             name    get-name     No Name     ---------------------------------------------------------------------------    returns the evaluated value of the parameter passed in     executing it  if it is a scriptblock    function eval  item        if   item -ne  null             if   item -is  ScriptBlock                  return  amp   item                   return  item           return  null      an extended assignment function  implements logic for Ternarys and Null-Coalescing expressions function Invoke-Assignment       if   args               ternary         if   p    array   IndexOf  args       1                if  eval  args 0                      return eval  args  p                              return eval  args   array   IndexOf  args      p   1                         null-coalescing         if   p     array   IndexOf  args       p  1                 if   result   eval  args 0                      return  result                            return eval  args  p                         neither ternary or null-coalescing  just a value           return eval  args 0             return  null      alias the function to the equals sign  which doesn t impede the normal use of     set-alias   Invoke-Assignment -Option AllScope -Description  FearTheCowboy s Invoke-Assignment     Which makes it easy to do stuff like  more examples in blog post     message      age  gt  50     Old Man    Young Dude

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Since a ternary operator is usually used when assigning value  it should return a value  This is the way that can work    var    value if false   value if true    byte  condition     Stupid  but working  Also this construction can be used to quickly turn an int into another value  just add array elements and specify an expression that returns 0-based non-negative values

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PowerShell currently doesn t didn t have a native Inline If  or ternary If  but you could consider to use the custom cmdlet  IIf  lt condition gt   lt condition-is-true gt   lt condition-is-false gt  See  PowerShell inline If  IIf

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