CODEWITHSUNDEEP
arrayspowershellmultidimensional-array
acadea
acadea

Reputation: 37

How to define multidimensional arrays of different types in powershell

I'm stuck.

I would like to create a multidim array with the following structure

$x[index]['word']="house" 

$x[index]['number']=2,5,7,1,9

where index is the first dimension from 0 to... n

second dimension has two fields "word" and "number"

and each of these two fields holds an array (the first with strings, the second with numbers)

I do not know how to declare this $x

I've tried with

$x = @(()),@(@()) - doesn't work

or

$x= ("word", "number"), @(@()) - doesn't work either

or

$x = @(@(@(@()))) - nope

Then I want to use this array like this:

$x[0]["word"]= "bla bla bla"
$x[0]["number]= "12301230123"
$x[1]["word"]= "lorem ipsum"
$x[2]["number]=...
$x[3]...
$x[4]...

The most frequent errors are

Array assignment failed because index '0' was out of range.

Unable to index into an object of type System.Char/INt32

I would like to accomplish this using arrays[][] or jaws @ but no .net [,] stuff.

I think I'm missing something.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2080

Answers (2)

Frode F.
Frode F.

Reputation: 54821

If I understood you correctly, you're looking for an array of hashtables. You can store whatever you want inside an object-array, so store hashtables that you can search with words or numbers as keys. Ex:

$ht1 = @{}
$ht1["myword"] = 2
$ht1["23"] = "myvalue"
$ht2 = @{}
$ht2["1"] = 12301230123

$arr = @($ht1,$ht2)


PS > $arr[1]["1"]
12301230123

PS > $arr[0]["myword"]
2

PS > $arr[0]["23"]
myvalue

If you know how many you need, you can use a shortcut to create it: 

#Create array of 100 elements and initialize with hashtables
$a = [object[]](1..100)
0..($a.Length-1) | % { $a[$_] = @{ 'word' = $null; 'number' = $null } }


#Now you have an array of 100 hastables with the keys initialized. It's ready to recieve some values.
PS > $a[99]

Name                           Value
----                           -----
number
word

And if you need to add another pair later, you can simply use:

$a += @{ 'word' = $yourwordvar; 'number' = $yournumbervar }

Upvotes: 1

Davor Josipovic
Davor Josipovic

Reputation: 5504

You could make an array, and initialize it with hashtables:

$x=@(@{})*100;    
0..99 | foreach {$x[$_]=@{}};
$x[19]["word"]="house";
$x[19]["number"]=25719;

You want a big array, for example of length 100. Note the difference in parentheses!

You need the second step, because in the previous command the pointer of the hashtable was copied 100 times... and you don't want that :)

Now test it:

$x[19]["number"];
25719
$[19]["word"];
house

Upvotes: 0

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