What Does Percent(%) Mean in PowerShell

Using Percent (%) in Different Contexts

Typically the % character is for mod functionality. But in PowerShell, it’s an alias for ForEach-Objectand can be also used as Modulus Operator and an Assignment Operator (%=). Let’s learn each of them below.“

Use Percent(%) as an alias of the ForEach-Object cmdlet in PowerShell

We can use % sign instead of ForEach-Object cmdlet as % is alias for ForEach-Object cmdlet.

Get-Alias -Definition ForEach-Object

CommandType     Name
Alias           % -> ForEach-Object
Alias           foreach -> ForEach-Object

The above command will list all of the aliases for the cmdlet ForEach-Object. In PowerShell, the alias is a short and alternate name for a function, cmdlet, or script. For example, the ForEach-Object cmdlet is used to perform a specific operation on every item in a collection of input objects, and it is an alias for % and foreach.

Let’s see with the help of example:

30, 20, 10 | ForEach-Object -Process {$_/10}

3
2
1

This example takes an array of three integers and divides each one of them by 10.

30, 20, 10 | % -Process {$_/10}

3
2
1

As we can see, we replaced ForEach-Object with % and it worked in same way.

Use percent (%) as the Modulus Operator in PowerShell

13 % 5  

3

Here, the % is a modulus operator when applied to an equation; we ran the above command to check this.

Use percent(%) as an assignment operator (%=) in PowerShell

$num=13
$num %= 5
$num

3

That’s all about what does percent mean in PowerShell.