How do I concatenate strings and variables in PowerShell?

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#1

How do I concatenate strings and variables in PowerShell?

Suppose I have the following snippet:

$assoc = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ Id = 42 Name = “Slim Shady” Owner = “Eminem” }

Write-Host ($assoc.Id.ToString() + " - " + $assoc.Name + " - " + $assoc.Owner)

I’d expect this snippet to show:

42 - Slim Shady - Eminem

But instead it shows:

42 + - + Slim Shady + - + Eminem

This makes me think the + operator isn’t appropriate for concatenating strings and variables.

How should you approach this with PowerShell?

#2

Hey Dharapatel,

To concatenare string in PowerShall you can embed variables directly within double-quoted strings using $().

This allows you to directly insert the value of $assoc.Id, $assoc.Name, and $assoc.Owner into the string without explicitly converting them to strings first.

Write-Host “$($assoc.Id) - $($assoc.Name) - $($assoc.Owner)”

Hope this helped you.

#3

Hello Dipen,

My thoughts here are to concatenate strings in PowerShell you can also use -join operator

The -join operator concatenates an array of strings into a single string, inserting the specified separator (" - " in this case) between each element. By providing an array containing the values of $assoc.Id, $assoc.Name, and $assoc.Owner, you can concatenate them with the separator.

Write-Host ($assoc.Id, $assoc.Name, $assoc.Owner -join " - ")

#4

Hey Sam,

Can we also use the Format method?

I tried using it below; it worked for me. What are your thoughts on it?

The -f operator is used for string formatting in PowerShell. You provide a format string (“{0} - {1} - {2}”), where {0}, {1}, and {2} are placeholders for the values to be inserted. After the format string, you provide the values to insert ($assoc.Id, $assoc.Name, and $assoc.Owner), which will be inserted into the format string in the specified locations.

Write-Host "{0} - {1} - {2}" -f $assoc.Id, $assoc.Name, $assoc.Owner