CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
Jacek
Jacek

Reputation: 1108

Turn environment variable into an array

I need to pass an array to a PowerShell subprocess and was wondering how I can turn an environment variable (string) into a PowerShell array. Is there a convention I need to follow so PowerShell will do it for me automatically or I just need to parse it myself?

I'm looking for something similar to what bash can do. If I set an environment variable such as:

MYARR = one two three

It'll be automatically interpreted by bash as an array, so I can do:

for a in ${MYARR[@]} ; do
    echo Element: $a
done

And that will return:

Element: one
Element: two
Element: three

Is there a way I can do the same in PowerShell?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 5886

Answers (1)

Ansgar Wiechers
Ansgar Wiechers

Reputation: 200483

Split the value of the environment variable at whatever delimiter is used. Example:

PS C:\> $env:Path
C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
PS C:\> $a = $env:Path -split ';'
PS C:\> $a
C:\WINDOWS\system32
C:\WINDOWS
C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem
C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
PS C:\> $a.GetType().FullName
System.String[]

Edit: The PowerShell equivalent to bash code like this

for a in ${MYARR[@]} ; do
    echo Element: $a
done

would be

$MYARR -split '\s+' | ForEach-Object {
    "Element: $_"
}

Use $env:MYARR instead of $MYARR if the variable is an actual environment variable instead of a PowerShell variable.

Upvotes: 8

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