How can I set a variable in a conditional statement?

Unfortunately PowerShell doesn't have a conditional assignment statement like Perl ($var = (<condition>) ? 1 : 2;), but you can assign the output of an if statement to a variable:

$var = if (<condition>) { 1 } else { 2 }

Of course you could also do the "classic" approach and assign the variable directly in the respective branches:

if (<condition>) {  $var = 1} else {  $var = 2}

The second assignment doesn't supersede the first one, because only one of them is actually executed, depending on the result of the condition.

Another option (with a little more hack value) would be to calculate the values from the boolean result of the condition. Negate the boolean value, cast it to an int and add 1 to it:

$var = [int](-not (<condition>)) + 1

In Powershell 7 you can use the ternary operator:

$x = $true ? 1 : 2echo $x

displays 1.

What you may want however is switch, e.g.,

$in = 'test2'$x = switch ($in) {'test1' {1}'test2' {2}'test3' {4}}echo $x

displays 2.

A little example that can help to understand.

PowerShell script:

$MyNbr = 10$MyMessage = "Crucial information: " + $(    if ($MyNbr -gt 10) {        "My number is greater than 10"    } elseif ($MyNbr -lt 10) {        "My number is lower than 10"    } else {        "My number is 10"    })Write-Host $MyMessage

Output:

Crucial information: My number is 10

If you change the MyNbr variable, you will have a different result depending on conditions in the if statements.