How to pass boolean values to a PowerShell script from a command prompt

Question

I have to invoke a PowerShell script from a batch file. One of the arguments to the script is a boolean value:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoProfile -File .\RunScript.ps1 -Turn 1 -Unify $false

The command fails with the following error:

Cannot process argument transformation on parameter 'Unify'. Cannot convert value "System.String" to type "System.Boolean", parameters of this type only accept booleans or numbers, use $true, $false, 1 or 0 instead.

At line:0 char:1
+  <<<< <br/>
+ CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (:) [RunScript.ps1], ParentContainsErrorRecordException <br/>
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterArgumentTransformationError,RunScript.ps1

As of now I am using a string to boolean conversion inside my script. But how can I pass boolean arguments to PowerShell?

Answer 1

A more clear usage might be to use switch parameters instead. Then, just the existence of the Unify parameter would mean it was set.

Like so:

param (
  [int] $Turn,
  [switch] $Unify
)