Can I get "&&" or "-and" to work in PowerShell?

Question

Note: This question originally asked in 2009, when powershell did not have support for the && operator. In 2019, per Jay's answer, microsoft added support for && and || in Powershell 7. https://stackoverflow.com/a/564092/234

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Original Question

&& is notoriously hard to search for on Google Search, but the best I've found is this article which says to use -and.

Unfortunately it doesn't give any more information, and I can't find out what I'm supposed to do with -and (again, a notoriously hard thing to search for).

The context I'm trying to use it in is "execute cmd1, and if successful, execute cmd2", basically this:

csc /t:exe /out:a.exe SomeFile.cs && a.exe

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If you just want to run multiple commands on a single line and you don't care if the first one fails or not, you can use ; For most of my purposes this is fine.

For example: kill -n myapp; ./myapp.exe.

Answer 1

In CMD, '&&' means "execute command 1, and if it succeeds, execute command 2". I have used it for things like:

build && run_tests

In PowerShell, the closest thing you can do is:

(build) -and (run_tests)

It has the same logic, but the output text from the commands is lost. Maybe it is good enough for you, though.

If you're doing this in a script, you will probably be better off separating the statements, like this:

build
if ($?) {
    run_tests
}

2019/11/27: The &&operator is now available for PowerShell 7 Preview 5+:

PS > echo "Hello!" && echo "World!"
Hello!
World!

Answer 2

&& and || were on the list of things to implement (still are) but did not pop up as the next most useful thing to add. The reason is that we have -AND and -OR.

If you think it is important, please file a suggestion on Connect and we'll consider it for V3.

Answer 3

Try this:

$errorActionPreference='Stop'; csc /t:exe /out:a.exe SomeFile.cs; a.exe

Answer 4

If your command is available in cmd.exe (something like python ./script.py, but not PowerShell command like ii . (this means to open the current directory by Windows Explorer)), you can run cmd.exe within PowerShell. The syntax is like this:

cmd /c "command1 && command2"

Here, && is provided by cmd syntax described in this question.

Answer 5

I tried this sequence of commands in PowerShell:

First Test

PS C:\> $MyVar = "C:\MyTxt.txt"
PS C:\> ($MyVar -ne $null) -and (Get-Content $MyVar)
True

($MyVar -ne $null) returned true and (Get-Content $MyVar) also returned true.

Second Test

PS C:\> $MyVar = $null
PS C:\> ($MyVar -ne $null) -and (Get-Content $MyVar)
False

($MyVar -ne $null) returned false and so far I must assume the (Get-Content $MyVar) also returned false.

The third test proved the second condition was not even analyzed.

PS C:\> ($MyVar -ne $null) -and (Get-Content "C:\MyTxt.txt")
False

($MyVar -ne $null) returned false and proved the second condition (Get-Content "C:\MyTxt.txt") never ran, by returning false on the whole command.

Answer 6

Very old question, but for the newcomers: maybe the PowerShell version (similar but not equivalent) that the question is looking for, is to use -and as follows:

(build_command) -and (run_tests_command)

Answer 7

Just install PowerShell 7 (go here, and scroll and expand the assets section). This release has implemented the pipeline chain operators.

Answer 8

A verbose equivalent is to combine $LASTEXITCODE and -eq 0:

msbuild.exe args; if ($LASTEXITCODE -eq 0) { echo 'it built'; } else { echo 'it failed'; }

I'm not sure why if ($?) didn't work for me, but this one did.

Answer 9

in 2023, you can use ; operator in PowerShell.

&& doesn't seem to work.

Answer 10

Use:

if (start-process filename1.exe) {} else {start-process filename2.exe}

It's a little longer than "&&", but it accomplishes the same thing without scripting and is not too hard to remember.

Answer 11

I think a simple if statement can accomplish this. Once I saw mkelement0's response that the last exit status is stored in $?, I put the following together:

# Set the first command to a variable
$a=somecommand

# Temporary variable to store exit status of the last command (since we can't write to "$?")
$test=$?

# Run the test
if ($test=$true) { 2nd-command }

So for the OP's example, it would be:

a=(csc /t:exe /out:a.exe SomeFile.cs); $test = $?; if ($test=$true) { a.exe }

Answer 12

I also have faced the same issue. The cause is that I am using an old version of powershell (I am already on Windows 11). To check version type this in powershell: $PSVersionTable

I found I was actually using version 5, while the latest is 7.4.

PSVersion                      5.1.22621.963
PSEdition                      Desktop

After install the latest (you can download separately or just go Microsoft Store), And ensure you have successfully switched to new version (you may need to extra config to choose this version, as it install new version not replacing old one)

PSVersion                      7.3.2
PSEdition                      Core

After I switch to the latest version, && works perfectly.

Answer 13

We can try this command instead of using && method:

try {hostname; if ($lastexitcode -eq 0) {ipconfig /all | findstr /i bios}} catch {echo err} finally {}

Answer 14

It depends on the context, but here's an example of "-and" in action:

get-childitem | where-object { $_.Name.StartsWith("f") -and $_.Length -gt 10kb }

So that's getting all the files bigger than 10kb in a directory whose filename starts with "f".