PowerShell: How to Update Values in Hash Table

Often you may want to update values in a hash table in PowerShell.

You can use the following methods to do so:

Method 1: Update One Specific Value in Hash Table

$my_hash['A0004'] = 50

This particular example updates the key named A0004 to have a value of 50 in the hash table named $my_hash.

Method 2: Update Multiple Values in Hash Table

foreach($key in $($my_hash.keys)){
    $my_hash[$key] = 50
}

This particular example updates each key to have a value of 50 in the hash table named $my_hash.

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following hash table named $employees that contains keys that represent employee ID numbers and values that represent the total sales made by each employee:

$employees = [ordered]@{
  'A0001' = 24;
  'A0002' = 20;
  'A0003' = 14;
  'A0004' = 31;
  'A0005' = 9;
  'A0006' = 15;
  'A0007' = 22;
}

Example 1: How to Update One Specific Value in Hash Table

We can use the following syntax to update the key A0004 to have a value of 50 in the hash table named $employees:

$employees['A0004'] = 50

The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:

Notice that the key A0004 now has a value of 50, just as we specified.

All other values remained unchanged in the hash table.

Example 2: How to Update Multiple Values in Hash Table

We can use the following syntax with a foreach loop to update all keys to have a value of 50 in the hash table named $employees:

foreach($key in $($employees.keys)){
    $employees[$key] = 50
}

The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:

Notice that all keys in the hash table now have a value of 50, just as we specified.

Related Tutorials

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:

PowerShell: How to Check if Hash Table Contains Specific Key
PowerShell: How to Iterate Over a Hash Table
PowerShell: How to Remove Elements from a Hash Table