CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellindexing
Gordon
Gordon

Reputation: 6873

Powershell Index math

I have a couple scenarios where a series of arbitrary string values have a specific priority sequence. For example:

forgo > log > assert

exception > failure > error > warning > alert

And, I need to evaluate an arbitrary number of scenarios that resolve to one of those values and maintain a running status. So, using the simpler example, if every evaluation is assert then the final running status would be assert. But if a single evaluation is log and the rest are assert, the the final running status is log. And a single forgo means the final status is forgo, no matter what the mix of individual status results was. I want to provide a human readable running status and individual status, do the math to determine what the new running index is, then return the human readable status.

So, I have this, and it works.

$statusIndex = @('assert', 'log', 'forgo')

$runningStatus = 'forgo'
$individualStatus = 'log'

$runningStatusIndex = $statusIndex.indexof($runningStatus)
$individualStatusIndex = $statusIndex.indexof($individualStatus)

if ($individualStatusIndex -gt $runningStatusIndex) {
    $runningStatusIndex = $individualStatusIndex
}

$runningStatus = $statusIndex[$runningStatusIndex]

But, this feels like something that happens often enough that there may be a more "native" way to do it. Some built in PowerShell functionality that handles the same thing more elegantly and in less code.

Is my intuition correct, and there is a native way? Or, perhaps a more elegant approach than what I have here?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 53

Answers (1)

Mathias R. Jessen
Mathias R. Jessen

Reputation: 174760

Put your terms in an array, in precedence order:

$statusIndex = @('forgo', 'log', 'assert')

Aggregate all your status values and remove any duplicates:

$statusValues = 'assert', 'assert', 'log', 'assert' 
$statusValueSet = $statusValues |Sort -Unique

Now use the .Where() extension method to select only the first matching term from the precedence list:

$overallStatus = $statusIndex.Where({$_ -in $statusValueSet}, 'First')

Value of $overallStatus should now be 'log' as expected.

3-4 lines of code instead of 9-10 :)

Upvotes: 1

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