moving command into function question

PowerShell Help
1

hello all,

while attempting to count files of a particular directory by running directly a command (shown below) my output is the expected one. However, when I’m wrapping that command into a function (or a variable) and then calling it from an if statement the output is not correct.

In specific, my Directory has 4 files at the moment.

[C:\Temp]> ls

Directory: C:\Temp

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d----- 16/07/2019 14:04 PM New folder
d----- 16/07/2019 14:04 PM New folder - Copy
-a---- 16/07/2019 14:04 PM 0 New Microsoft Word Document - Copy.docx
-a---- 16/07/2019 14:04 PM 0 New Microsoft Word Document.docx

Creating a function to measure dir contents:

[C:\Temp]> function Get-DirContents { (([System.IO.Directory]::EnumerateFileSystemEntries("C:\Temp\")) | Measure-Object).Count }

Which seems to count dir contents

[C:\Temp]> Get-DirContents
4

and if I delete the files bring zero:

[C:\Temp]> Get-DirContents
0

when I’m adding that function to an if statement the result is not correct:

[C:\Temp]> if (Get-DirContents -eq '0') {Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
dir is empty

[C:\Temp]> Get-DirContents
4

[C:\Temp]> if (Get-DirContents -eq '0') {Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
dir is empty

but this way works:

if ((([System.IO.Directory]::EnumerateFileSystemEntries("C:\Temp\")) | Measure-Object).Count -eq '0') {Write-Host "Dir is empty"} else { Write-Host "files copied"}
files uploaded

I would like to understand why if I wrap the command into a function is not working and if use the command works.

2

What I find interesting, is that whatever the first -eq is set to always evaluates as true.

PS C:\temp> if (Get-DirContents -eq 1) {get-dircontents} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
5
PS C:\temp> if (Get-DirContents -eq '0') {Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
dir is empty

However, I ended up doing this

$count=Get-DirContents
$count
5
PS C:\temp> if ($count -eq 0){Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
files copied
PS C:\temp> if ($count -eq 5){Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
dir is empty

So, I find it odd that if I put it into a variable it works.
Finally I did this:

function get-dircontents {(get-childitem -path C:\temp *).count}
PS C:\temp> get-dircontents
5
PS C:\> if (get-dircontents -eq 5) {write-host True} else {write-host false}
True
PS C:\> if (get-dircontents -eq 0) {write-host True} else {write-host false}
True

Which led me to this link:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18148560/powershell-functions-that-return-true-false

3

Replying to myself because I couldn’t just leave well enough alone…

Going from the previous result:

 

$count + 5
10

get-dircontents + 5
5

(get-dircontents) + 5
10
PS C:\temp> if (Get-DirContents -eq '0') {Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
dir is empty
PS C:\temp> if ((Get-DirContents) -eq '0') {Write-Host "dir is empty"} else {Write-Host "files copied"}
files copied

So wrapping the function in () allows it to return as a number…