Seems find a Bug, Can anyone plz confirm

PowerShell Help
1

Hi Team,

During writing a script, I found elseif is not working properly. I feel it may be a bug, can you please check your end and confirm me, also if you find any error, please rectify me too…

The Code - (Sample) do { $X= Read-Host " Please type any number" if ($X -gt 0) { "$X is greater than zero" } ElseIf ($X -lt 0) { "$X is negative" } Else { "This Number appears to be zero" } } until ($X -eq "")

The problem is the negative value cannot be detected. But, if I use a number with decimal point, then it’s working. Suppose if I input .1, then it shows “.1 is negative”.
I tried removing the DO loop too, but the same result…

Regards,
Roy.

2

You’re not checking numbers. You are checking strings at the moment! :wink:

3

Agreed. The odds of there being a bug with ElseIf are slim ;).

$X is a string, not a number. “A” cannot be greater than zero; even if the string is a digit, comparisons don’t work that way.

Try:

[int]$X = Read-Host “Whatever”

To further understand this, try running this in the console, typing each line and hitting Enter:

$a = 5
$b = “5”
$a + $b
$b + $a
$a -gt 1
$b -gt 1
4

You’ll also see that $X.GetType() is a string. But actually, if you put the 0 first in the comparison, it will cast $X to an int32 for the comparison.

do {
  $X= Read-Host " Please type any number"
  if (0 -lt $X) {
    "$X is greater than zero"
  }
  ElseIf (0 -gt $X) {
    "$X is negative"
  }
  Else {
    "This Number appears to be zero"
  }
}
until ($X -eq "")
5

Hi Don / Team,

Did the test as Mr.Don suggested. And as usual get confused and looking for the answer.

$a = 5 | As per rule, this is automatically treated as Int32 type.

$b = “5” | As per rule, the DoubleQuotes help to treat as String type.

$a + $b | Is the concept is like, if the first variable type is Int, then the second variable also treated as Int?

$b + $a | Same concept, for string type it’s concatenating!! Am I right?

$a -gt 1 |Both cases it’s true!! For int, it’s okay? But for string!! How?
$b -gt 1

I am confused on the math and comparison operation. What is the concept? Please help me to understand.

Regards,
Roy.

6

Looks like ‘5’ -gt ‘1’ is true. But not ‘-5’ -lt ‘1’ and not ‘15’ -gt ‘2’. I think it goes by the ascii order of the first character. That’s why a numeric sort is different from a string sort. Actually I’m not sure why the ‘-5’ isn’t less than a ‘1’.

PS C:\users\admin> [int[]][char[]]'-5'
45
53
PS C:\users\admin> [int[]][char[]]'1'
49