Missing-ternary-operator

Missing ternary operator

PowerShell v7.preview.4 introduced the ternary operator. Older versions do not have it but workarounds exist.

Workaround 1: if/else statement

The well known workaround is

$result = if ($condition) {$data1} else {$data2}

It will do in most cases. But there are some drawbacks.

if/else may lose the original data type, see the tests and Unrolled-collections.

if/else is a statement, not an expression, see Statements-are-not-expressions. Although it can be assigned to a variable, it cannot be used directly as a part of another expression. In this case the subexpression $(if ...) must be used.

Workaround 2: array/index expression

Yet another possible workaround is

$result = ($data1, $data2)[!$condition]

It is not pretty perhaps but it preserves the original data type and it is an expression, so that it can be used as a part of another expression directly.

Scripts

• Test-1-ternary-workaround.ps1 shows how 1 converts Object[] to Int32, 2 preserves the data.
• Test-2-ternary-workaround.ps1 shows how 1 converts ArrayList to Object[], 2 preserves the data.
• Test-3-part-of-expression.ps1 shows how 1 and 2 are used in another expression, 1 with $(), 2 as it is.
• Test-4-v7.ps1 uses the ternary operator in v7.

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• Microsoft Connect 53059