Increment variable in PowerShell from within if statement within a foreach loop. Seems broken

Question

I have a super easy one here but I cannot figure it out and driving me insane. I suspect it is some kind of scoping issue of the variable (global, etc.?)

Anyway, here is my code:

$i = 0
foreach ($line in Get-Content 'somefile.txt') {

    if ($i = 1) {
        echo "$i Line: $line"
    }
    $i++
    // I even tried $i = $i + 1
}

Output is $1 = 1 always. It doesn't seem to count.

How can I fix this?

= is an assignment, to compare use if ( $i -eq 1){

user6811411
– user6811411

2018-08-13 08:58:18 +00:00
Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 8:58 — user6811411
– user6811411, Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 8:58

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-29 15:05:00Z

2

$i = 1 assigns 1 to $i, so the result is always 1.

You need to use -eq: if ($i -eq 1) ...

See Get-Help about_comparison_operators for more information.

edited Dec 29, 2018 at 15:05

Peter Mortensen

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answered Aug 13, 2018 at 8:58

arco444

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Comments

boxdog · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-13 08:57:57Z

1

Your question isn't clear, but it looks like you're trying to output each line of your text file with the line number prepended. If so, one way to do it is:

Get-Content 'somefile.txt' |
    ForEach-Object {$i = 0}{
        "$i Line: $_"
        $i++
    }

answered Aug 13, 2018 at 8:57

boxdog

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4 Comments

Graham Smart Over a year ago

Yeah pretty much what I want to do. Ideally only show certain lines that match a number. Still not sure why my code fails to increment a simple variable.

arco444 Over a year ago

@GrahamSmart it doesn't fail to increment, you are setting it back to 1 every time the loop runs

Graham Smart Over a year ago

How am i?? I dont see that as the declaration is outside of the loop?

Graham Smart Over a year ago

I hate PS ;) thanks guys! , boxdog your code worked wonders too !

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