Safely converting string to bool in PowerShell

Question

I\'m trying to convert an argument of my PowerShell script to a boolean value. This line

[System.Convert]::ToBoolean($a)

works fine as long

Answer 1

just looked for this again and found my own answer - but as a comment so adding as an answer with a few corrections / other input values and also a pester test to verify it works as expected:

Function ParseBool{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [Parameter(Position=0)]
        [System.String]$inputVal
    )
    switch -regex ($inputVal.Trim())
    {
        "^(1|true|yes|on|enabled)$" { $true }

        default { $false }
    }
}

Describe "ParseBool Testing" {
    $testcases = @(
        @{ TestValue = '1'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = ' true'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'true '; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'true'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'True'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'yes'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'Yes'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'on'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'On'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'enabled'; Expected = $true },
        @{ TestValue = 'Enabled'; Expected = $true },

        @{ TestValue = $null; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = ''; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = '0'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = ' false'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'false '; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'false'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'False'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'no'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'No'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'off'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'Off'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'disabled'; Expected = $false },
        @{ TestValue = 'Disabled'; Expected = $false }
    )


    It 'input  parses as ' -TestCases $testCases {
        param ($TestValue, $Expected)
        ParseBool $TestValue | Should Be $Expected
    }
}