If you’re needing to access a PowerShell variable, but aren’t guaranteed that the variable has already been declared, you might be looking for a surefire way of finding out. Luckily, the PSProvider that manages the variable store can easily tell you. Simply use the Test-Path cmdlet like so:
if (Test-Path "variable:\VarName") { Write-Host "The variable VarName exists. Its value is $VarName" }
Note that this can come in handy whether or not you use Strict Mode; Test-Path will return $false for a variable that hasn’t been assigned a value at all, but will report $true if the variable has been explicitly assigned a value of $null. If you were trying to dump the return value of a cmdlet into a variable, for instance, this distinction can sometimes tell you whether the cmdlet ended its execution abnormally.
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