Question

is it possible to do something like below in powershell?

$condition = "-eq 10"
$a=11

if ($a &$condition) {"yes"} else {"no"}

basically to create part of the statement outside the statement and then use it dynamically?

I am aware I can create the whole statement in variable and then run it using Invoke-Expression or as &$cmd, but I have a very long and complex if/else statement and trying to build part of it on the fly.

Hope it makes sense 🙂

Answer 1

Yes, if you’re OK with swapping order e.g.:

C:\PS> $conditionEq10 = {param($a) $a -eq 10}
C:\PS> $a = 11
C:\PS> if (&$conditionEq10 $a) {'yes'} else {'no'}
no
C:\PS> $a = 10
C:\PS> if (&$conditionEq10 $a) {'yes'} else {'no'}
yes

You can do prefix style notation using scriptblocks {code} with PowerShell but not infix nor postfix. That’s because PowerShell wants the arguments to follow the scriptblock (not before and not between).