String Conversion in PowerShell

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PowerShell does some magical things when it comes to string conversion. Understanding a little bit about how it works can help you make sense of what’s happening in your scripts.

Some of the basic operations that you may encounter when converting between types in PowerShell may be examples such as dates, versions and numbers.

[int]$Number = "123"
[DateTime]$DateTime = '10-12-2021'
[Version]$Version = '1.0.1'
PS > $Number
123
PS > $DateTime

Tuesday, October 12, 2021 12:00:00 AM

PS > $Version

Major  Minor  Build  Revision
-----  -----  -----  --------

PowerShell takes care of these various conversions by either using the .NET constructor or the parse method of each type. You can get a similar result by using the parse methods directly.

$Number = [int]::Parse('123')
$DateTime = [DateTime]::Parse('10-12-2021')
$Version = [Version]::Parse('1.0.1')

In some scenarios, the casting of a string does more complicated operations. This is the case with type accelerators like XML and WMI.

In these cases, the parse or constructor is not used directly but instead internal operations convert to the destinate type.

[xml]$Xml = "<root><nested></nested></root>"
PS > $Xml | Get-Member

   TypeName: System.Xml.XmlDocument

Certain types, like DateTime, provide additional methods for parse types. You can take advantage of these .NET Methods by calling them directly rather than casting.

For example, you can call the ParseExact method of DateTime to convert a custom date and time string to a DateTime object.

PS > [DateTime]::ParseExact('20211012', 'yyyyMMdd', $Host.CurrentCulture)

Tuesday, October 12, 2021 12:00:00 AM

Conversion can also happen in the opposite direction. If you have objects that you convert to strings, the ToString method will be called for the object. Each object type can implement ToString differently so you may have different results.

Versions for example, will return a friendly version string.

[Version]$Version = '1.0.1'
[string]$Version
# Returns 1.0.1