Use Get-Date "time" in an "if" statement PowerShell - powershell

Question

$WshShell = New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell
$Time = (Get-Date).hour
$Time2 = Get-Date -DisplayHint Time
$Message ="Test for $Env:username at: " + $Time2
$fail = "ERROR:It is $Time2, which is past 12PM"
$PopUp = $WshShell.popup("$Message",0,"Task Scheduler Pop-up",1)
if ($Time2 > 12)
{
$PopUp = $wshShell.popup("$Message",0,"Task Scheduler Pop-up",1)
}
else {
$PopUp = $wshShell.popup("$fail",2,"Task Scheduler Pop-up",1)
}
Hi guys, I'm practicing a little bit of my PowerShell and have run across something I'm not quite sure how to Google for, or what method I need to use to get this to work correctly.
What I'm attempting to accomplish is have my box display only, the hour and minute like "12:31".
As you can see in the script I'm calling the
Hour, but I can't quite figure out how to have it display the time by itself the right way. I'm using the "Time" operator, but when you compare that in the "IF" statement, it doesn't recognize it as something it can compare itself to since it's not a real integer. I understand why, but I would like to be able to compare the .Hour to $Time2
I'm new to this and appreciate any help you can provide!
Thank you!

Answer 1

Don't think in terms of output strings before you actually need to.
> won't work for comparisons, you need to use -lt (less than) and -gt (greater than)
If you want to compare the time of two DateTime objects (regardless of the date), you can compare the TimeOfDay property:
$DateTimeNow = Get-Date
$DateTimeEarly = Get-Date -Hour 1 -Minute 5
if($DateTimeNow.TimeOfDay -lt $DateTimeEarly.TimeOfDay){
"It is very early right now!"
} else {
"It is at least past 01:05"
}
If you want to show the time in output, you have multiple options for formatting a DateTime string:
You can use the ToString() method with a formatting string:
PS C:\> (Get-Date).ToString('HH:mm')
20:41
The format operator -f:
PS C:\> '{0:HH:mm}' -f (Get-Date)
20:41
Or have Get-Date return a formatted string itself:
PS C:\> Get-Date -Format 'HH:mm'
20:41
If you want 12-hour style time, use hh:mm

Answer 2

If you need to display the time you could use one of several methods. Those would all convert the result to string. I think you need to save $time2 as just a [datetime] object. That way you can format it for display and use .Hour for comparison logic.
$Time2 = Get-Date
$Message ="Test for $Env:username at: " + $Time2.ToString("HH:mm")
$PopUp = $WshShell.popup("$Message",0,"Task Scheduler Pop-up",1)
if ($Time2.Hour -gt 12){
#Do Stuff
}
This logic would only work for 24hr time though. 1(pm) is less than 12 but later in the day. Which is what HH:mm represents.