In PowerShell, how can I test if a variable holds a numeric value?

Question

In PowerShell, how can I test if a variable holds a numeric value?

Currently, I\'m trying to do it like this, but it always seems to return false.

Answer 1

I ran into this topic while working on input validation with read-host. If I tried to specify the data type for the variable as part of the read-host command and the user entered something other than that data type then read-host would error out. This is how I got around that and ensured that the user enters the data type I wanted:

do
    {
    try
        {
        [int]$thing = read-host -prompt "Enter a number or else"
        $GotANumber = $true
        }
    catch
        {
        $GotANumber = $false
        }
    }
until
    ($gotanumber)