{"id":9981,"date":"2006-07-15T18:02:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-15T18:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/powershell\/2006\/07\/15\/psmdtagfaq-what-is-ofs\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T13:21:32","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:21:32","slug":"psmdtagfaq-what-is-ofs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/psmdtagfaq-what-is-ofs\/","title":{"rendered":"PSMDTAG:FAQ: What is $OFS"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my blog entry regarding Cascading Type Casts ( http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/powershell\/archive\/2006\/07\/15\/Cascading_Type_Casts.aspx<\/a> ) there was an example:<\/p>\n

PS> [string][char[]][int[]][char[]]”PowerShell”
P o w e r S h e l l <\/p>\n

And in a comment was a question asking why there were spaces between the letters.  The answer is $OFS<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PSMDTAG:FAQ: What is $OFS<\/p>\n

$OFS is a special variable that contains the string to be used as the Ouptut Field Sperator.   This string is used when an array is converted to a string.  By default, this is ” ” but you can change it.<\/p>\n

Here are some examples to clarify:<\/p>\n

PS> $a=”1″,”2″,”3″,”4″
<\/strong>PS> $a
<\/strong>1
2
3
4
PS> [string]$a
<\/strong>1 2 3 4
PS> $OFS=””;[string]$a
<\/strong>1234
PS> $OFS=”,”;[string]$a
<\/strong>1,2,3,4
PS> $OFS=”–PowerShellRocks–“;[string]$a
<\/strong>1–PowerShellRocks–2–PowerShellRocks–3–PowerShellRocks–4
PS> $OFS=”`n`n”;[string]$a
<\/strong>1<\/font><\/p>\n

2<\/font><\/p>\n

3<\/font><\/p>\n

4
PS><\/font><\/p>\n

Experiment and Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows PowerShell\/Aspen Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at:    http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/PowerShell<\/a>
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at:  http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/technet\/scriptcenter\/hubs\/msh.mspx<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my blog entry regarding Cascading Type Casts ( http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/powershell\/archive\/2006\/07\/15\/Cascading_Type_Casts.aspx ) there was an example: PS> [string][char[]][int[]][char[]]”PowerShell” P o w e r S h e l l And in a comment was a question asking why there were spaces between the letters.  The answer is $OFS   PSMDTAG:FAQ: What is $OFS $OFS is a special variable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":13641,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,10],"class_list":["post-9981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-powershell","tag-environment","tag-faq"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

In my blog entry regarding Cascading Type Casts ( http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/powershell\/archive\/2006\/07\/15\/Cascading_Type_Casts.aspx ) there was an example: PS> [string][char[]][int[]][char[]]”PowerShell” P o w e r S h e l l And in a comment was a question asking why there were spaces between the letters.  The answer is $OFS   PSMDTAG:FAQ: What is $OFS $OFS is a special variable […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/powershell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}