Mastering Windows PowerShell Scripting - Second Edition

Type and type conversion

Type conversion in PowerShell is used to switch between different types of a value. Types are written between square brackets, in which the type name must be a .NET type, or a class, or an enumeration, such as a string, an integer (Int32), a date (DateTime), and so on.

For example, a date may be changed to a string:

PS> [String](Get-Date)10/27/2016 13:14:32

Or a string may be changed into a date:

PS> [DateTime]"01/01/2016"01 January 2016 00:00:00 

In a similar manner, variables may be given a fixed type. To assign a type to a variable, the following notation is used:

[String]$thisString = "some value" 
[Int]$thisNumber = 2 
[DateTime]$date = '01/01/2016' 

This adds an argument type converter attribute to the variable. ...