PowerShell Strings

A string in PowerShell is a sequence of characters enclosed within a single quote (`'`) or double quotes (`"`). Strings can contain alphanumeric characters, symbols, spaces and special characters.

# enclosed in double quotes
PS C:\> "Hello, Administrator!"

# enclosed in single quotes
PS C:\> 'Hello, Administrator!'

PowerShell offers several methods for manipulating strings, including string concatenation, replacing characters, splitting one string into multiple strings and string interpolation.

How to Concatenate Strings in PowerShell

To concatenate multiple strings into a single string in PowerShell, use concatenation operator (`+`).

$firstName = "Gary"
$lastName = "Ponting"

$fullName = $firstName + $lastName
$fullName

Result:

Gary Ponting

How to Replace Characters or Words within a String in PowerShell

The -replace operator in PowerShell allows you to replace characters or words within a string.

$myVar = "Hello, Gary!"

$myVar = $myVar -replace "Gary","Adam"

Write-Output $myVar

Result:

Hello, Adam

How to Split String in PowerShell

The -split operator in PowerShell allows you to split a string into multiple strings based on a specified delimiter.

$colors = "blue,orange,red"

$color = $colors -split ","

Write-Output $color[0]

Result:

blue

How to Interpolate String in PowerShell

PowerShell supports string interpolation, which allows you to embed variables and expressions within a string.

$name = "Gary"
"Hello, $name!"

Result:

Hello, Gary!

How to Perform String Comparison in PowerShell

PowerShell provides several comparison operators for strings, including:

• -eq: Equal to
• -ne: Not equal to
• -like: Support wildcards

$string1 = "Hello"
$string2 = "Hello,"
$string3 = "World"
$string4 = "world"

# Check if both strings are equal
$string1 -eq $string2

# Check if both strings are not equal
$string1 -ne $string3

# Check if both strings are equal
$string3 -eq $string4

# Check if string1 like to string2
$string1 -like $string2

Result:

False
True
True
False

How to Find Length of a String in PowerShell

To determine the length of a string in PowerShell, use the Length property.

$string = "PowerShell"
$string.Length

Result:

10

Formatting Strings in PowerShell

Formatting strings in PowerShell makes code readable.

$string1 = "Hello"
$string2 = "PowerShell"

# Format the names
"{0} {1}" -f $string1, $string2

Result:

Hello PowerShell

Conclusion

I hope the above article on how to use PowerShell strings and its methods to manipulate strings is helpful to you.

You can find more topics about Active Directory tools and PowerShell basics on the ActiveDirectoryTools home page.