Powershell string parsing

Lets say I have a string with several columns separated by spaces. The number of spaces and the data in each column are unknown. How would you grab what's in col3 using PowerShell? I know how I would do it with Awk, but that won't necessarily be available to me.

col1 col2 col3 col4

Look at the split command.
Topic: Simulating awk in or equivalent in Select-String

Hi Jnich,

There are two ways you should approach this string splitting: by using the second parameter of the .Split() method, or by using the -split operator.

The .Split() .NET method of the string type has six overloads, one of which allows you to specify [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries after the string you wish to split by.

Code:

$a.Split(' ', [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries)

The second way, which is shorter and more PowerShell-ic, is to use the -split operator. It’s typical use involves two arguments on either side of the operator, e.g., $a -split ' ', but if you do this you’ll find it’s equivalent to doing $a.Split(' ') which doesn’t help. Instead there’s a second overload that lets you specify a single argument, to the right of the operator, and this will split the string by whitespace and automatically remove empty entries: -split $a.

Code:

PS> $a = 'ABC    69278  DEF      10278'
PS> $a.Split(' ')
ABC



69278

DEF





10278
PS> $a.Split(' ', [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries)
ABC
69278
DEF
10278
PS> -split $a
ABC
69278
DEF
10278
PS> (-split $a)[2]
DEF
PS>

Btw, are you going to get back to your previous thread?

Pyprohly said:

Btw, are you going to get back to your previous thread?

I saw your reply, but forgot to mark as solved. Instead of escaping everything as admin, I wrote a simple batch script which can be executed as admin. I'm used to the Linux way, but I need to learn the right and wrong way to do things in Windows. I appreciate everyone's help!

Windows is a very different beast to tame than Linux.

If you’re more comfortable with it you can run bash shell scripts on Windows you know.

But good on you for wanting to picking up the new skills.