Question

I am looking for an easy way to convert numeric strings e.g. “1.78M” “1.47B” to an integer variable.

Any help is appreciated.

thanks

Answer 1

Are you looking for M == MB or M == 1E6? If it is the former, PowerShell understands KB, MB, GB and TB e.g.:

C:\PS> Invoke-Expression "2MB"
2097152

Big caveat here with Invoke-Expression, if you’re getting the string from a user, file, i.e. an untrusted source. You have to be careful about executing it. Say the string is "2MB; Remove-Item C:\ -Recurse -Force -Whatif -EA 0", you’d have a bad day using Invoke-Expression on that string. BTW, I’m being nice here by adding the -Whatif. 🙂

If it is the latter, you could do a regex -replace followed by a coercion e.g.:

C:\PS> [long]("3.34 B" -replace '(\d+)\s*(B)','$1E9')
3340000000