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

Question

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!

&& 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.

Try this:

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

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.

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.

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)