If you want to use the shorthand you can make use of conditional logic with the following shorthand. Only the string 'false' will evaluate to true (2.0).
#Done in Powershell 2.0 $boolean = $false; $string = "false"; $emptyString = ""; If($boolean){ # this does not run because $boolean is false Write-Host "Shorthand If conditions can be nice, just make sure they are always boolean." } If($string){ # This does run because the string is non-zero length Write-Host "If the variable is not strictly null or Boolean false, it will evaluate to true as it is an object or string with length greater than 0." } If($emptyString){ # This does not run because the string is zero-length Write-Host "Checking empty strings can be useful as well." } If($null){ # This does not run because the condition is null Write-Host "Checking Nulls will not print this statement." }