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PowerShell: Foreach Statement

Iterating over an array

foreach can be used to iterate over an array:

$ar = 10 .. 14

foreach ($elem in $ar) {
  $elem / 3
}

# 3.33333333333333
# 3.66666666666667
# 4
# 4.33333333333333
# 4.66666666666667

Github repository about-powershell, path: /language/statement/foreach/array.ps1

Skipping specific elements in an iteration

The continue statement allows to skip specific iterations:

forEach ($val in 'foo', 'bar', 'baz') {

  if ($val -eq 'foo') {
    write-host 'Skip processing of foo'
    continue
  }

  write-host "Processing $($val)"

}

Github repository about-powershell, path: /language/statement/foreach/continue.ps1

Breaking out of a foreach loop

The break statement causes the foreach loop to be immediately terminated.

The following example only prints the square numbers from 1 through 4.

foreach ($num in 1 .. 10) {

  if ($num -eq 5) { break }

  write-host "$($num) * $($num) = $($num * $num)"

}

Github repository about-powershell, path: /language/statement/foreach/break.ps1

Iterating over files in a directory

Because get-childItem retuns an array of objects, it can be easily combined with foreach to iterate over some files in a directory:

foreach ($fileObj in get-childItem '*i*.ps1') {

 #
 # Convert the System.IO.FileInfo object to a string:
 #
   $fileStr = split-path -leaf $fileObj

   write-output $fileStr
}

Github repository about-powershell, path: /language/statement/foreach/get-childItem.ps1

In a similar fashion, foreach can be used on any cmdLet that returns an array of objects.

PowerShell: Foreach Statement

Iterating over an array

Skipping specific elements in an iteration

Breaking out of a foreach loop

Iterating over files in a directory

See also