{"id":8161,"date":"2015-01-26T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2015\/01\/26\/understanding-numbers-in-powershell\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:35:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T17:35:47","slug":"understanding-numbers-in-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/understanding-numbers-in-powershell\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Numbers in PowerShell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about numbers in Windows PowerShell.<\/span>\n\"Hey, Hey, Scripting Guy! One of the things that is frustrating to me with Windows PowerShell is the way that it handles numbers. For example, I want to know the percent of processor utilization for something, and it displays a number that is like fifty million numbers long. What is up with that? Why can’t Windows PowerShell just tell me something useful?\n—SP\n\"Hey, Hello SP,\nMicrosoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Today it is cold and raining outside. I decided to make a cup of red berry tea. It does not have any caffeine, and it seems to be just thing for a cold, rainy morning. I do not mix my own red berry tea—this is one of the teas that I buy already mixed. I still had a nice bag I brought back from Hamburg. Anyway, I am sitting here sipping a nice cup of red berry tea and I came across your email to scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>. It is perfect because today I am kicking off Numbers Week.\nThere are many cmdlets and functions built-in to Windows PowerShell that display a formatted number. But there are other interfaces that return the raw number. The reason for this is that I may want to display information to 1, 2, 3, or even 5 decimal places, depending on what I am monitoring. In many cases, I work with the entire raw number so I can get a better view of what exactly might be taking place. For this reason, it makes sense to understand a bit about the types of numbers in Windows PowerShell.<\/p>\n

Numeric types<\/h2>\n

There are many types of numbers in Windows PowerShell. Most of the time, I do not need to know anything about the different types of numbers because Windows PowerShell performs the type conversion behind the scenes. However, a good understanding of the types of numbers can be useful, and it is certainly useful from a troubleshooting perspective. There are actually three numeric types that Windows PowerShell uses:<\/p>\n