There are two common ways to concatenate strings in PowerShell:
Method 1: Use plus ( + ) sign
Write-Host $first_string + " " + $second_string
Method 2: Use join operator
$first_string,$second_string -join " "
Both of these examples concatenate the first_string and second_string variables together using a space as a separator.
The following examples show how to use each method in practice.
Example 1: Concatenate Strings in PowerShell Using Plus Sign
One of the most common ways to concatenate strings together in PowerShell is to simply use a plus (+) sign in between the string variables with a specific separator.
For example, we can use the following syntax to concatenate two strings together using a single space as a separator:
$first_string = "I really hope"
$second_string = "that you are having a great day"
$final_string = $first_string + " " + $second_string
Write-Host $final_string
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that the two strings have been concatenated together with a single space in between them.
Example 2: Concatenate Strings in PowerShell Using Join Operator
Another common way to concatenate strings together in PowerShell is to use the join operator followed by a specific separator.
For example, we can use the following syntax to concatenate two strings together using a single space as a separator:
$first_string = "I really hope"
$second_string = "that you are having a great day"
$first_string,$second_string -join " "
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can see that the two strings have been concatenated together with a single space in between them.
If you would like to concatenate strings using a different separator, you can specify it after the join operator.
For example, we can use the following syntax to concatenate the string variables together using a dash as a separator:
$first_string = "I really hope"
$second_string = "that you are having a great day"
$first_string,$second_string -join "-"
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that the two strings have been concatenated together with a dash in between them.
Note: The join operator is particularly useful when concatenating several string variables together so that you don’t have to manually type out a plus sign after each variable name.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Replace Every Occurrence of String in File
PowerShell: How to Replace Special Characters in String
PowerShell: How to Replace Text in String
