PowerShell: Generally Case-Insensitive
PowerShell was designed with user-friendliness in mind. For most practical use cases, cmdlets, function names, parameters, and aliases are case-insensitive. That means the following commands all do the same thing:
Get-Process
get-process
GET-PROCESS
gEt-PrOcEsS
PowerShell doesn’t care how you capitalize the command — it will interpret and execute them the same way. This flexibility makes scripting faster and reduces the chances of syntax errors due to inconsistent casing.
So Why Say "PowerShell Commands Are Case-Sensitive"?
While commands themselves are case-insensitive, certain operations and contexts in PowerShell are case-sensitive. This is where the confusion often arises.
Let’s explore some of these scenarios:
1. Case-Sensitive Comparison Operators
PowerShell provides a set of comparison operators that are case-insensitive by default (like -eq, -ne, -like, etc.). But there are also case-sensitive variants, such as:
-
-ceq: Case-sensitive equals -
-cne: Case-sensitive not equals -
-clike: Case-sensitive wildcard comparison
2. Variable Names and Case Sensitivity
Variable names in PowerShell are also case-insensitive by default:
$MyVar = "test"
$myvar # Returns "test"
However, if you're working with certain external environments or APIs that enforce case sensitivity (such as when passing data to a case-sensitive language or system), then the distinction may matter.
3. File System Differences
On Windows, the file system (NTFS) is case-insensitive by default. But if you're running PowerShell on Linux or macOS, which use case-sensitive file systems (like ext4 or APFS), then file and directory names are case-sensitive.
Example:
Get-Content ./file.txt # Works
Get-Content ./File.txt # May fail on Linux/macOS if 'File.txt' doesn't exist
4. Using External Tools or APIs
When PowerShell interacts with other case-sensitive systems (like JSON data, APIs, or certain databases), the casing of strings, keys, or field names may need to be exact.