You can use the Compare-Object cmdlet to compare two sets of objects in PowerShell.
By default, the Compare-Object cmdlet displays the values that are different between the two objects along with a SideIndicator to indicate which object a given value belongs to.
To output only the different values between two objects, you can use the following syntax:
Compare-Object $object1 $object2 | Select -ExpandProperty InputObject
This particular example will return only the values that are different between $object1 and $object2.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to Use Compare-Object and Only Show Differences
Suppose we create two arrays in PowerShell named $array1 and $array2 and we would like to compare the the differences between the two arrays.
Suppose we use the Compare-Object cmdlet to do so:
$array1 = @(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
$array2 = @(6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13)
Compare-Object $array1 $array2
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
The InputObject column displays values that only occur in one of the arrays while the SideIndicator column shows which array the value belongs to.
For example, we can see:
- The value 11 only occurs in the second array ( => )
- The value 12 only occurs in the second array ( => )
- The value 13 only occurs in the second array ( => )
- The value 1 only occurs in the first array ( <= )
- The value 2 only occurs in the first array ( <= )
And so on.
To only display the values that are different between the two arrays, we can use the following syntax:
$array1 = @(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
$array2 = @(6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13)
Compare-Object $array1 $array2 | Select -ExpandProperty InputObject
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this only returns the values that are different between the two objects.
By using the -ExpandProperty operator we were able to specify that we only wanted to return the InputObject column from the output.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the Compare-Object cmdlet in PowerShell here.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
How to Compare Two Arrays in PowerShell
How to Compare Two Strings in PowerShell
How to Compare Two Files in PowerShell
How to Compare Two Folders in PowerShell
