There are many tools to work with strings...
Many times when working with PowerShell, I find myself needing to manipulate text strings. There are a ton of ways you can manipulate strings, and a lot of those are thanks to the built-in methods included on all string objects.
I've covered some of my favorite string manipulation techniques for you here.
Read MoreFiguring out objects really isn't this hard...
Everyone who works with PowerShell beyond a rudimentary level could benefit from a basic understanding of .NET objects.
This post won't show you everything, but it might help peel the curtain back a little to get you started.
Read MoreQuick one today, a very simple trick I learned a few days ago: if you need to copy and paste your output from the console, instead of using the markup tools built in to cmd.exe, you can simply pass your output directly to the clipboard. No big trick needed for this; just pipe the output to clip.exe and it will be put on the clipboard, ready to be pasted wherever you need. It's built in to the OS, so you don't need to download and install anything.
Let's say I have a list of user account I've grabbed from Active Directory and saved to the variable $users, and I need to send that list in an email. I could enter "$users" by itself on the command line, then select and hit enter to copy. Then I would paste the list...and find I need to strip out all of the white space this creates. It's not hard, but it can be inconvenient sometimes, especially if it's a long list.
Instead, I could just run "$users | clip.exe" and get the same effect, only without jumping through hoops, without the chance of over or under selecting, and without selecting a bunch of extra white space.
It's really that easy. Just add " | clip.exe" to the end and it will throw the screen output into the clipboard directly instead of on to the screen, and then you can paste it normally.
If you've ever run into a situation where you know you won't be needing those pesky first or last lines in a text file (this also works for other arrays, BTW), then this is a quick and easy way to get just what you're looking for:
Explanation: you can call a particular object by the index, or in this case, a particular line in the file. Remember, the index number will be one number lower than the line number, because the index starts at 0, so line 20 will be at index 19, or $test[19].
You can also call a range of indices, such as to get lines 1 through 5, you would use $test[0..4]. You can use a variable number to specify the index as well, such as $test[$index].
Put this all together, and you can strip the last line out of your variable with:
Since the count is going to be the full number of lines, $var.count - 1 would be the last line, so you want it to stop at the next to last line, or $var.count - 2.
Removing the first line is likewise simple, with just a tiny modification:
If you need more than one line off of either side, just tweak the numbers. Simple!
