Comparison question string vs int

Question

Can someone explain to me why these comparisons work they way the do. I had a bug in one of my scripts that took me a little bit to work through. I was using read-host and typing a number. It was storing it as a string.

Write-Host "(`'2`' -gt 9 ) = " ('2' -gt 9 )
Write-Host "(2 -gt 9 ) = " (2 -gt 9 )
Write-Host "(`'2`' -gt 10 ) = " ('2' -gt 10 )

If you are comparing a string to an Int does it use the Ascii value? If so why does the first one show $false, it should be $true.

Then how is it when you change the int to 10 it becomes $true.

Answer 1

On comparison a right value is converted to the type of a left value. Thus, '2' -gt 9 becomes '2' -gt '9', that is False, and '2' -gt 10 becomes '2' -gt '10', that is True.