Comparison Operators

You can use many comparison operators to specify or identify a condition. Comparison operators compare two values to determine whether a condition exists. Most comparison operators return True if the condition exists and a False if it doesn't exist.

As a simple example, imagine a variable called $num had a value of 100. The comparison $num -eq 100 would be evaluated as True, while $num -eq 5 would be evaluated as False.

Comparisons don't have to be numbers. They can also be text; however, when comparing text data, the text string needs to be enclosed in quotes. For example, if you wanted to know if a variable named $str has a value of "MCITP," you'd use this comparison:

String comparisons are case insensitive by default. In other words, both of these would evaluate to True:

$str -eq "mcitp"
$str -eq "MCITP"

However, if you want the comparison to be case sensitive, you can add the letter c to the operator switch, like this:

Table below lists some of the commonly used comparison operators. You can enter these at the command line to see the result. For example, to see how the -eq command works, you could populate the variable $num with 5 and then use the variable in a comparison like this:

$num = 5
$num -eq 100

PowerShell will return False.

Comparison operators

$str -like "MCITP*"
$str -like "*Win*"
$str -like "*7"

You'll see comparison operators used in many different ways. For example, they are used in cmdlet switches when a comparison is needed and in IF statements when you're scripting.