Ternary operator in PowerShell

Question

From what I know, PowerShell doesn\'t seem to have a built-in expression for the so-called ternary operator.

For example, in the C language, which supports the terna

Answer 1

I too, looked for a better answer, and while the solution in Edward's post is "ok", I came up with a far more natural solution in this blog post

Short and sweet:

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Name:   Invoke-Assignment
# Alias:  =
# Author: Garrett Serack (@FearTheCowboy)
# Desc:   Enables expressions like the C# operators: 
#         Ternary: 
#              ?  :  
#             e.g. 
#                status = (age > 50) ? "old" : "young";
#         Null-Coalescing 
#              ?? 
#             e.g.
#                name = GetName() ?? "No Name";
#             
# Ternary Usage:  
#         $status == ($age > 50) ? "old" : "young"
#
# Null Coalescing Usage:
#         $name = (get-name) ? "No Name" 
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

# returns the evaluated value of the parameter passed in, 
# executing it, if it is a scriptblock   
function eval($item) {
    if( $item -ne $null ) {
        if( $item -is "ScriptBlock" ) {
            return & $item
        }
        return $item
    }
    return $null
}

# an extended assignment function; implements logic for Ternarys and Null-Coalescing expressions
function Invoke-Assignment {
    if( $args ) {
        # ternary
        if ($p = [array]::IndexOf($args,'?' )+1) {
            if (eval($args[0])) {
                return eval($args[$p])
            } 
            return eval($args[([array]::IndexOf($args,':',$p))+1]) 
        }

        # null-coalescing
        if ($p = ([array]::IndexOf($args,'??',$p)+1)) {
            if ($result = eval($args[0])) {
                return $result
            } 
            return eval($args[$p])
        } 

        # neither ternary or null-coalescing, just a value  
        return eval($args[0])
    }
    return $null
}

# alias the function to the equals sign (which doesn't impede the normal use of = )
set-alias = Invoke-Assignment -Option AllScope -Description "FearTheCowboy's Invoke-Assignment."

Which makes it easy to do stuff like (more examples in blog post):

$message == ($age > 50) ? "Old Man" :"Young Dude"