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In PowerShell's documentation, I have come across the expression expandable string:

Argument mode is designed for parsing arguments and parameters for commands in a shell environment. All input is treated as an expandable string unless it uses one of the following syntaxes:

Unfortunately, I am unable to find a definition for expandable string and my question is: what is an expandable string in PowerShell?

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  • Do the answers to How to expand variable in powershell? explain it for your purposes? Commented Dec 11, 2020 at 14:54
  • @AndrewMorton: yes, they answer my question. Commented Dec 11, 2020 at 15:03
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    You might also want to research the following Function: $ExecutionContext.InvokeCommand.ExpandString Commented Dec 11, 2020 at 15:32

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It is definitely unfortunate that, as of this writing, the official help topic on PowerShell string literals, about_Quoting_Rules doesn't introduce the term expandable string [update: the online version now does; to also see the update locally, you may have to run Update-Help].

An expandable string is:

  • A double-quoted string literal ("...")

    • By contrast, a single-quoted string ('...') is a verbatim (literal) string.
    • For an overview of all types of PowerShell string literals, which includes here-string variants (e.g., @"<newline>...<newline>"@), see the bottom section of this answer.

  • Double-quoted strings perform string interpolation (expansion).

    • This allows you to embed simple variable references as-is (e.g, "$var"), and expressions and whole statements via $() (e.g., "$($var.property)"). Escape verbatim $ (and ") chars. with `. Enclose variable names in {...} for disambiguation (e.g. "${var}").
    • For the complete rules, see this answer.
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