3.6. Type Conversions

In the previous section, we introduced type literals and the major data types used in PowerShell. But how do all these types work together? This is a critical question we had to address in designing PowerShell. In shell languages, there’s usually only string data, so you never have to worry about things being of the wrong type. So how could the PowerShell team achieve this “typeless” behavior in PowerShell? The answer was a comprehensive system for handling type conversions automatically.

Automatic type conversion is the “secret sauce” that allows a strongly typed language like PowerShell to behave like a typeless command-line shell. Without a comprehensive type conversion system to map the output of one command to the input type required by another command, PowerShell would be nearly impossible to use as a shell.