I do not undewrstand how -if works

[OMU1994]

I use version 13.19 for windows 11. I have been using it and stumbled upon

Output from Powershell on Windows 11

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PS V:\Bilder> exiftool  -DateTimeCreated -city -sub-location 2025\2025-02-07
======== 2025/2025-02-07/Ulm, Innere-Wall-Strasse, Schubart-Gymnasium mit Sternwarte 2025-02-07_2318.jpg
Date/Time Created              : 2025:02:07 13:22:38+01:00
City                            : Ulm
Sub-location                    : Innere-Wall-Strasse
    1 directories scanned
    1 image files read
Comment: the tags IPTC:City, IPTC:Sub-location  and DateTimeCreated exist

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PS V:\Bilder> exiftool  -if "defined $City" -DateTimeCreated -city -sub-location 2025\2025-02-07
    1 directories scanned
    1 files failed condition
    0 image files read
In my humble opinion this should give the same output, since the Tag City exists

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PS V:\Bilder> exiftool  -if "defined $IPTC:City" -DateTimeCreated -city -sub-location 2025\2025-02-07
    1 directories scanned
    1 files failed condition
    0 image files read
The same: In my humble opinion this should give the same output, since the Tag City exists

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PS V:\Bilder> exiftool  -if "not defined $IPTC:City" -DateTimeCreated -IPTC:city -sub-location 2025\2025-02-07
======== 2025/2025-02-07/Ulm, Innere-Wall-Strasse, Schubart-Gymnasium mit Sternwarte 2025-02-07_2318.jpg
Date/Time Created              : 2025:02:07 13:22:38+01:00
City                            : Ulm
Sub-location                    : Innere-Wall-Strasse
    1 directories scanned
    1 image files read
This is most crazy: If I test for the non-Existence of an existing tag, it is shown.

Somehow this defies my understanding of boolean logic.

Yet another observation: Testing for the existence of a tag containing a hyphen does not work at all:
-if "defined $IPTC:Sub-location" seems to not work.

It would be nice if someone could help me sorting things out.

Thanks
Othmar

[StarGeek]

Don't use PowerShell. Use CMD. The quoting rules for PS are different than every other command line and what works on CMD with double quotes or Mac/Linux with single quotes sometimes doesn't work either way on PS. See this post.

[OMU1994]

Thanks for clarifying this