How can I test that a variable is more than eight characters in PowerShell?

Question

How do test if the number of characters in $dbUserName is more than eight characters?

I have been unable to locate a command or series of commands that will let me do this. I have only been able to find if the variable is null:

if ($dbUserName) {     Write-Output " You left Username blank"     $dbUserName = read-host } 

But I would like to next test like this:

if ($dbUserName [String] > 8 ) }     Write-Output " Please enter more than 8 characters "     $dbUserName=read-host " Re-enter database user name" } 

Answer 1

Use the length property of the [String] type:

if ($dbUserName.length -gt 8) {     Write-Output "Please enter more than 8 characters."     $dbUserName = Read-Host "Re-enter database username" } 

Please note that you have to use -gt instead of > in your if condition. PowerShell uses the following comparison operators to compare values and test conditions:

• -eq = equals (==)
• -ne = not equals (!=)
• -lt = less than (<)
• -gt = greater than (>)
• -le = less than or equals (<=)
• -ge = greater than or equals (>=)

Answer 2

You can also use -match against a Regular expression. Ex:

if ($dbUserName -match ".{8}" ) {     Write-Output " Please enter more than 8 characters "     $dbUserName=read-host " Re-enter database user name" } 

Also if you're like me and like your curly braces to be in the same horizontal position for your code blocks, you can put that on a new line, since it's expecting a code block it will look on next line. In some commands where the first curly brace has to be in-line with your command, you can use a grave accent marker (`) to tell powershell to treat the next line as a continuation.