Dynamic Casting
We've seen a couple requests for this on our internal mailing lists so I thought other people would be interested.
There are times when you want to do something like:
$d = [DateTime]
[$d]"12/25/2007"
Or (using a STRING instead of a TYPE):
$d = Read-Host –Prompt "TYPE:"
[$d]"12/25/2007"
Of course if either of these worked – I wouldn't be writing this blog. Jim Truher provided the solution: the –AS operator.
The –AS operator casts an object to a particular type. Now in a traditional language, casting is thin operation which basically tells the compiler to think about things differently. In PowerShell, the –AS operator is a way to tell PowerShell want you want happen and then we do whatever we can do to make your wishes true. (e.g. we do casting, coercion, conversion, etc).
PS>$d = [DateTime]
PS>"12/25/2007" -as $d
Tuesday, December 25, 2007 12:00:00 AM
PS>$d = Read-Host "Type"
Type: DateTime
PS>"12/25/2007" -as $d
Tuesday, December 25, 2007 12:00:00 AM
Enjoy!
Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
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