How to format a decimal datatype in powershell as an ipv6 address in Powershell?

Question

The only datatype in powershell that I'm aware of that can store 128-bits is the [decimal] and while I seem to be able to store the variable:

PS /home/leeand00/> [decimal]$ipv6addr=0x20010db81234

I don't seem to be able to pull it back out again (clearly that's a decimal):

PS /home/leeand00/>$ipv6addr                
35188897223220

And I thought maybe this would do it, but it does not:

PS /home/leeand00/>"{0:x4}" -f ($ipv6addr)
Error formatting a string: Format specifier was invalid..                       
At line:1 char:1
+ "{0:x4}" -f $ipv6addr
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: ({0:x4}:String) [], RuntimeException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : FormatError

The above error doesn't make sense because...the datatypes is decimal

PS /home/leeand00/Documents/lifehacker organized/docs> $ipv6addr.GetType().Name 
Decimal

PS, I'm aware there are tools for working with IPv6 in Powershell, but I'm just trying to perform some simple binary operations when learning about it.

Answer 1

PowerShell is just using the underlying .NET types and converters. The 'X' specifier does not support decimal input:

Standard Numeric Format Strings

Result: A hexadecimal string.

Supported by: Integral types only.

Precision specifier: Number of digits in the result string.

If you have a decimal, one option to make this work is to first cast to an int , int64 or uint64 (depending on size of input):

"0x{0:x4}" -f [int64]ipv6addr