Comparison operators (-eq, -ne, -gt, -lt) in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using Comparison Operators in PowerShell

📖 Scenario: You are helping a store manager check product stock levels to decide if they need to reorder items.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that uses comparison operators -eq, -ne, -gt, and -lt to compare stock counts and print messages.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary of products with their stock counts

Add a reorder threshold variable

Use comparison operators to check stock levels

Print messages based on the comparisons

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Store managers often need to check stock levels to decide when to reorder products. Automating this saves time and avoids running out of items.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use comparison operators in scripts helps automate routine checks and decisions in IT, operations, and inventory management roles.

1

Create the product stock dictionary

Create a dictionary called products with these exact entries: 'Apples' = 50, 'Bananas' = 20, 'Oranges' = 0, 'Grapes' = 15.

PowerShell

# Create the products dictionary with stock counts
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use @{} to create a dictionary in PowerShell with keys and values separated by =.

2

Add a reorder threshold variable

Create a variable called reorderThreshold and set it to 10.

PowerShell

$products = @{ 'Apples' = 50; 'Bananas' = 20; 'Oranges' = 0; 'Grapes' = 15 }
# Create reorderThreshold variable and set to 10
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 10 to the variable $reorderThreshold.

3

Check stock levels using comparison operators

Use a foreach loop with variables product and stock to iterate over $products.GetEnumerator(). Inside the loop, use -lt to check if stock is less than $reorderThreshold and store the result in a variable called needsReorder.

PowerShell

$products = @{ 'Apples' = 50; 'Bananas' = 20; 'Oranges' = 0; 'Grapes' = 15 }
$reorderThreshold = 10
# Loop through products and check stock against reorderThreshold
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use $products.GetEnumerator() to loop through the dictionary. Use -lt to compare stock with threshold.

4

Print messages based on stock comparison

Inside the foreach loop, use if with $needsReorder to print "Reorder needed for $product" if true, else print "Stock is sufficient for $product".

PowerShell

$products = @{ 'Apples' = 50; 'Bananas' = 20; 'Oranges' = 0; 'Grapes' = 15 }
$reorderThreshold = 10
foreach ($item in $products.GetEnumerator()) {
    $product = $item.Key
    $stock = $item.Value
    $needsReorder = $stock -lt $reorderThreshold
    # Print message based on $needsReorder
    # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use if ($needsReorder) to decide which message to print with Write-Output.