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Next up is the ternary operator.

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This is also something that was introduced in Powershell 7.

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This is an alternative to using an if else statement in PowerShell. This

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operator is also described in the about_if help topic,

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which again, I'm always encouraging you to read the help.

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So the way this operator works is like this.

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We have some condition to test. That test has to

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return a value of true or false.

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If the value is true,

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then we run whatever code is on the right side of

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the question mark. If it's false,

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then we run whatever code is on the right side of the colon.

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Traditionally, and this is what we would do in Windows PowerShell 5.1,

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if 2 is greater than 1, then display yes, else,

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display no.

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And so we can see yes as the result. And here is the same

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expression rewritten using the ternary operator, 2 greater

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equal to 1. If that's true, then yes, otherwise, : no,

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and you can see the result of yes. So here is a little more complex

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example. I'm going to do Get‑Process notepad. Hey,

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is Notepad running?

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If it is, then I want to stop Notepad, otherwise, I'm going to

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write a warning saying Notepad is not running. When you're using

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the ternary operator in this regard,

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put the expression that you want to evaluate and run in

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parentheses. If Notepad is not running, which it isn't in this example here,

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then I get my Get‑Process warning and then I get the code that

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executes after the colon, in this case, the warning which says

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Notepad is not running. Using the ternary operator is great for

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really simple if else logic,

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especially if you want to do something like this at the

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console. When you get to scripting,

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my belief, it's just as easy to use an if else statement because

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the ternary operator does require PowerShell 7 so you'd have to

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take that into account in your scripts, but I don't want to get

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too far ahead of us.

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Let me show you a few other things here about the

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ternary operator. Here is another example,

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remember the expression that's on the left side of the question mark has to

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be either true or false. $isWindows is another one of these built‑in

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variables that is a Boolean value of true or false.

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If I'm running PowerShell 7 on Windows, that will have a result of true.

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If I'm running this on Linux or Mac, that result will be false.

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So if I'm running this on Windows then I can run

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Get‑CimInstance, and I'm using the alias gcim, and say hey

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get me the win32_operatingsystem w my class.

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Otherwise, if I'm not running on Windows, then run a

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Linux command, the lsb_release. Now,

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I don't know for a fact that will run on all Linux

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installs or all non‑Window systems,

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but I just want you to kind of get an idea of if I'm running Windows,

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then I want to run a Windows‑specific command, otherwise I'm going to run a non‑Windows command.