for vs foreach vs "foreach"
Many developers and sysadmins starting out with Powershell will assume that this:
$arr = 1..10
$arr2 = @()
foreach ($num in $arr) { $arr2 += $num + 1 }
write-output $arr2
is the same as this:
$arr = 1..10
$arr2 = @()
for ($i = 0; $i -lt $arr.length; $i++) { $arr2 += $arr[$i] + $i }
write-output $arr2
or this:
$arr = 1..10
$arr2 = @()
$arr | foreach { $arr2 += $_ + 1 }
Just like those Farmers Insurance commercials demonstrate, they are not the same. It’s not as critical of an error as, say, mixing up Write-Output with Write-Host (which I’ll explain in another post), but knowing the difference between the two might help your scripts perform better and give you more flexibility in how you do certain things within them.
You’ll also get some neat street cred. You can never get enough street cred.
for is a keyword. foreach is an alias…until it’s not.
Developers coming from other languages might assume that foreach is native to the interpreter. Unfortunately, this is not the case if it’s used during the pipeline. In that case, foreach is an alias to the ForEach-Object cmdlet, a cmdlet that iterates over a collection passed into the pipeline while keeping an enumerator internally (much like how foreach works in other languages). Every PSCmdlet incurs a small performance penalty relative to interpreter keywords as does reading from the pipeline, so if script performance is critical, you might be better off with a traditional loop invariant.
To see what I mean, consider the amount of time it takes foreach and for to perform 100k loops (in milliseconds):
PS C:> $st = get-date ; 1..100000 | foreach { } ; $et = get-date ; ($et-$st).TotalMilliseconds
2761.4339
PS C:> $st = get-date ; for ($i = 0 ; $i -lt 100000; $i++) {} ; $et = get-date ; ($et-$st).TotalMilliseconds
**279.2439**
PS C:> $st = get-date ; foreach ($i in (1..100000)) { } ; $et = get-date ; ($et-$st).TotalMilliseconds
**128.1159**
for was almost 10x faster, and the foreach keyword was 2x as fast as for! Words do matter!
foreach (the alias) supports BEGIN, PROCESS, and END
If you look at the help documentation for ForEach-Object, you’ll see that it accepts -Begin, -Process and -End script blocks as anonymous parameters. These parameters give you the ability to run code at the beginning and end of pipeline input, so instead of having to manually check your start condition at the beginning of every iteration, you can run it once and be done with it.
For example, let’s say you wanted to write something to the console at the beginning and end of your loop. With a for statement, you would do it like this:
$maxNumber = 100
for ($i=0; $i -lt $maxNumber; $i++) {
if ($i -eq 0) {
write-host "We're starting!"
}
elseif ($i -eq $maxNumber-1) {
write-host "We're ending!"
}
# do stuff here
}
This will have the interpreter check the value of $i and compare it against $maxNumber twice before doing anything. This isn’t wrong per se but it does make your code a little less readable and is subject to bugs if the value of $i is messed with within the loop somewhere.
Now, compare that to this:
1..100 | foreach `
-Begin { write-host "We're starting now" } `
-Process { # do stuff here } `
-End { write-host "We're ending!" }
Not only is this much cleaner and easier to read (in my opinion), it also removes the risk of the initialization and termination code running prematurely since BEGIN and END always execute at the beginning or end of the pipeline.
Notice how you can’t do this with the foreach keyword:
PS C:\> foreach ($i in 1..10) -Begin {} -Process {echo $_} -End {}
At line:1 char:22
+ foreach ($i in 1..10) -Begin {} -Process {echo $_} -End {}
+ ~
Missing statement body in foreach loop.
+ CategoryInfo : ParserError: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : MissingForeachStatement
In this case, foreach has no concept of BEGIN, PROCESS or END; it’s just like the foreach you’re used to using with other languages.
