Powershell Operator and Enclosure Precedencer

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Home > Essential PowerShell, PowerShell > Essential PowerShell: Know your operator and
enclosure precedence
Essential PowerShell: Know your operator and
enclosure precedence
July 8, 2009Leave a commentGo to comments
PowerShell version 1 comes with a lot of operators, and the list becomes even longer in version 2
with cool new operators like -split and -join. Whether youre writing scripts or using PowerShell
interactively, dealing with multiple operators in an expression that possibly contains different
enclosures (brackets, quotation marks, etc.) as well can be very tricky. It is very important to
know how the PowerShell interpreter processes the expression so that you can get your
expressions right the first time or, if youre not so lucky, so that you can identify the problem in
your expressions later and fix them.
Recently there have been several posts on the forums where the problem has been a lack of
understanding of the operator and enclosure precedence in PowerShell. Thats not too surprising
because the precedence order used by the PowerShell interpreter doesnt seem to be documented
at this time. You can find the precedence order of arithmetic operators through the
about_arithmetic_operators help file, you can find out some precedence details for specific
operators in various operator help files, and you can find out the precedence of command types
through the about_command_precedence help file, but thats about it. There is no single help file
that documents the overall operator and enclosure precedence. It doesnt seem to be listed in any
of the PowerShell books I have read either.
Fortunately through some ad hoc experimentation and through some reading of the help
documentation that does exist it is possible to figure out how all of this works. Ive gone through
that exercise recently and the resulting table of operator and enclosure precedence is below.
Before getting to the table though there are a few important things I should mention, as follows:
1. Any items that share the same row in the table have the same precedence and are evaluated
from left to right when adjacent within an expression unless otherwise indicated.
2. The intent of this table is to identify a precedence that can be used to create or troubleshoot
more complicated expressions without a lot of guesswork. It is not intended to explain what
each of the operators are and how you can use them (although to help understand
expressions you might have to deal with I do mention a few details about some operators
that function differently than the majority of operators in PowerShell).
3. If you want to learn about the individual operators and see examples showing how they can
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With that out of the way, here is the operator and enclosure precedence table for PowerShell:
[] Type enclosures
Any character placed inside of these
enclosures is treated as part of a literal
type name. The contents are not
evaluated like an expression would be.
Double-quoted string enclosures
Single-quoted string enclosures
@ @ Double-quoted here-string
enclosures
@ @ Single-quoted here-string enclosures
{} Script block enclosures
() Nested expression enclosures
@() Array subexpression enclosures
$() Subexpression enclosures
. Property dereference operator
:: Static member operator
[] Index operator
[int]
[string[]]
etc.
Cast operators
Multiple adjacent operators in this row
have a right-to-left evaluation.
-split (unary) Split operator (unary)
-join (unary) Join operator (unary)
These operators can be used as unary or
binary operators. Their precedence
varies depending on how they are used.
, Comma operator
This operator is the array element
separator. It can be used as an unary or
binary operator.
++ Increment operator
- - Decrement operator
These unary operators can be used
before or after a variable or property.
When used before the variable or
property (as a prefix operator), the
value is incremented or decremented
first and then the result is passed into
the expression in which it is contained.
When used after the variable or
property (as a postfix operator), the
value is passed into the expression in
which it is contained and then the
variable or property is immediately
incremented or decremented.
- Negate operator
-not Not operator
! Not operator
-bnot Bitwise not operator
.. Range operator
-f Format operator
Follow Follow
* Multiplication operator
/ Division operator
% Modulus operator
+ Addition operator
- Subtraction operator
-split
-isplit
-csplit
(binary)
Split operator (binary)
-join (binary) Join operator (binary)
-is Type is operator
-isnot Type is not operator
-as Type as operator
-eq
-ieq
-ceq
Equal to operator
-ne
-ine
-cne
Not equal to operator
-gt
-igt
-cgt
Greater than operator
-ge
-ige
-cge
Greater than or equal to operator
-lt
-ilt
-clt
Less than operator
-le
-ile
-cle
Less than or equal to operator
-like
-ilike
-clike
Like operator
-notlike
-inotlike
-cnotlike
Not like operator
-match
-imatch
-cmatch
Match operator
-notmatch
-inotmatch
-cnotmatch
Not match operator
-contains
-icontains
-ccontains
Contains operator
Does not contain operator
With the exception of the join operator
and the type operators (-is, -isnot, and
as), each of the operators in this row
has a case-sensitive and an explicit
case-insensitive variant. Case-sensitive
variants are prefixed with c (e.g. -ceq)
and case-insensitive variants are
prefixed with i (e.g. ireplace).
Follow Follow
-notcontains
-inotcontains
-cnotcontains
-replace
-ireplace
-creplace
Replace operator
-band Bitwise and operator
-bor Bitwise or operator
-bxor Bitwise exclusive or operator
-and Logical and operator
-or Logical or operator
-xor Logical exclusive or operator
. Dot-sourcing operator
& Call operator
Unary operators that are only valid at
the beginning of an expression, a nested
expression, or a subexpression.
= Assignment operator
+= Assignment by addition operator
-= Assignment by subtraction operator
*= Assignment by multiplication
operator
/= Assignment by division operator
%= Assignment by modulus operator
Since this table is created through experimentation and through snippets of information about
precedence that I was able to find in the help files, it may not be entirely accurate. If you find any
problems with the precedence information provided here, please let me know and Ill update this
table accordingly.
[Update 09-July-2009: Fixed table formatting, added an index operator, added all case-sensitive
and case-insensitive variants and adjusted the precedence for the property dereference and static
member operators.]
Thanks,
Kirk out.
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Comments (8)Trackbacks (3)Leave a commentTrackback
1.
stej
July 9, 2009 at 1:58 am | #1
Reply | Quote
Great, I was always wondering, whats the precedence of operators. It is very well defined
e.g. for C#, but I havent found anything for PowerShell.
You saved my time!
Kirk Munro
July 9, 2009 at 1:41 pm | #2
Reply | Quote
Thanks for the feedback, Im glad you like it!
2.
Aravind
August 19, 2010 at 9:49 pm | #3
Reply | Quote
This is very helpful.
3.
Jeremy Sproat
January 12, 2011 at 11:02 am | #4
Reply | Quote
Theres a subtle gotcha with the bitwise and logical operators.
AND operators should have a higher precedence than OR operators (much like * happens
before +). However, in PowerShell v2.0 (and probably v1.0) -band and -bor are evaluated
left to right.
Compare this PowerShell snippet:
PS> 1 -bor 0 -band 0
0
with Python:
>>> 1 | 0 & 0
1
When in doubt, use parentheses!
Essential PowerShell: Beware of
promiscuous types
Essential PowerShell: Learn how
to find what you are looking for
whence in PowerShell
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Kirk Munro
January 12, 2011 at 11:16 am | #5
Reply | Quote
Nice catch, I didnt pick up that one. Youre right about parentheses though, I use
them simply because it eliminates the guesswork for someone reading the script later.
Thanks for sharing!
Kirk out.
koenraad
April 27, 2011 at 8:03 am | #6
Reply | Quote
The same is true for -and and -or
PS> $true -or $true -and $false
False
PS> $true -or ($true -and $false)
True
4.
Sunil
June 19, 2012 at 10:39 pm | #7
Reply | Quote
neatly defined. Well done Kirk!
Kirk Munro
June 20, 2012 at 1:43 pm | #8
Reply | Quote
Thanks! The details in this post actually made it into PowerShell documentation, so
youll see docs with operator precedence in PowerShell in the next release, plus
theyre available online now (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/hh847842.aspx).
Kirk out.
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