How can I convert an array object to string?
I tried:
$a = "This", "Is", "a", "cat"
[system.String]::Join(" ", $a)
with no luck. What are different possibilities in PowerShell?
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6See my answer but your code works just fine, too. Why do you say "with no luck"?Roman Kuzmin– Roman Kuzmin2011-10-11 09:30:22 +00:00Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 9:30
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4Sorry, yes, it does seem to work, I think I messed up something when I tested this.jrara– jrara2011-10-11 09:41:43 +00:00Commented Oct 11, 2011 at 9:41
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6 Answers
$a = 'This', 'Is', 'a', 'cat'
Using double quotes (and optionally use the separator $ofs)
# This Is a cat
"$a"
# This-Is-a-cat
$ofs = '-' # after this all casts work this way until $ofs changes!
"$a"
Using operator join
# This-Is-a-cat
$a -join '-'
# ThisIsacat
-join $a
Using conversion to [string]
# This Is a cat
[string]$a
# This-Is-a-cat
$ofs = '-'
[string]$a
8 Comments
Simon Elms
Stackoverflow Documentation has been shut down so Liam's link is dead. Here's another explanation of $OFS, the Output Field Separator: blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/powershell/2006/07/15/…
Martin Bonner supports Monica
@JohanBoulé : Because using the first character of the Input Field Separator as the Output Field Separator is a nasty hack - and doesn't allow separating fields with multi-character strings. (Awk for example has FS and OFS variables).
testworks
Official documentation is here: github.com/MicrosoftDocs/PowerShell-Docs/blob/staging/reference/…
testworks
Seems you can't edit comments after a certain time. Here's a couple of working links: learn.microsoft.com PowerShell 7.1 GitHub PowerShell 7.1
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I found that piping the array to the Out-String cmdlet works well too.
For example:
PS C:\> $a | out-string
This
Is
a
cat
It depends on your end goal as to which method is the best to use.
3 Comments
JohnLBevan
FYI: just doing
$a would have the same effect as $a | out-string
rojo
@JohnLBevan Not always.
($a | out-string).getType() = String. $a.getType() = Object[]. If you're using $a as an argument to a method expecting a string (such as invoke-expression for example), then $a | out-string has a clear advantage.
Minkus
Tried this - note that Out-String can truncate long lines based on the characteristics of the host program, so you may experience long variables been wrapped to another line - see the Width parameter.
1> $a = "This", "Is", "a", "cat"
2> [system.String]::Join(" ", $a)
Line two performs the operation and outputs to host, but does not modify $a:
3> $a = [system.String]::Join(" ", $a)
4> $a
This Is a cat
5> $a.Count
1
Comments
From a pipe
# This Is a cat
'This', 'Is', 'a', 'cat' | & {"$input"}
# This-Is-a-cat
'This', 'Is', 'a', 'cat' | & {$ofs='-';"$input"}
Write-Host
# This Is a cat
Write-Host 'This', 'Is', 'a', 'cat'
# This-Is-a-cat
Write-Host -Separator '-' 'This', 'Is', 'a', 'cat'
3 Comments
Martin Konopka
This is amazing trick. The Example does not work anymore, and even though this answer is 5 years old, I try to explain what I learned today. The
$ofs is Output Field Separator variable which is used when an array is converted into string for output. Here it is set in the script block returning string value of the input (array from the pipe) which gets executed by the command &. I didn't know about $ofs before, as well as & accepting a script block as argument
Winand
$input variable learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/…
iseiryu
This one was difficult to find an answer for. Thank you! This will pull a list of words from a file and then pass them to a command as a list of arguments:
gc file.txt | & { command $input }You could specify type like this:
[string[]] $a = "This", "Is", "a", "cat"
Checking the type:
$a.GetType()
Confirms:
IsPublic IsSerial Name BaseType
-------- -------- ---- --------
True True String[] System.Array
Outputting $a:
PS C:\> $a This Is a cat
Comments
$a = "This", "Is", "a", "cat"
foreach ( $word in $a ) { $sent = "$sent $word" }
$sent = $sent.Substring(1)
Write-Host $sent
