CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellcommand-line
Humberto Freitas
Humberto Freitas

Reputation: 483

Sort-Object -Unique

I'm making a script that collects all the subkeys from a specific location and converts the REG_BINARY keys to text, but for some reason I can't remove the duplicate results or sort them alphabetically.

PS: Unfortunately I need the solution to be executable from the command line.

Code:

$List = ForEach ($i In (Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKCU:SOFTWARE\000' -Recurse)) {$i.Property | ForEach-Object {([System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString($i.GetValue($_)))} | Select-String -Pattern ':'}; ForEach ($i In [char[]]'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ') {$List = $($List -Replace("$i`:", "`n$i`:")).Trim()}; $List | Sort-Object -Unique

Test.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\000\Test1]
"HistorySZ1"="Test1"
"HistoryBIN1"=hex:43,00,3a,00,5c,00,54,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,5c,00,44,00,2e,00,\
  7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,54,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,5c,\
  00,43,00,2e,00,7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,54,00,65,00,\
  73,00,74,00,5c,00,42,00,2e,00,7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,\
  00,54,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,5c,00,41,00,2e,00,7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\000\Test2]
"HistorySZ2"="Test2"
"HistoryBIN2"=hex:4f,00,3a,00,5c,00,54,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,5c,00,44,00,2e,00,\
  7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00,43,00,3a,00,5c,00,54,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,5c,\
  00,43,00,2e,00,7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00,44,00,3a,00,5c,00,54,00,65,00,\
  73,00,74,00,5c,00,42,00,2e,00,7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00,41,00,3a,00,5c,\
  00,54,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,5c,00,41,00,2e,00,7a,00,69,00,70,00,5c,00,00,00

Upvotes: 1

Views: 303

Answers (2)

mklement0
mklement0

Reputation: 438093

The path strings that are encoded in your array of bytes are separated with NUL characters (code point 0x0).

Therefore, you need to split your string by this character into an array of individual paths, on which you can then perform operations such as Sort-Object:

You can represent a NUL character as "`0" in an expandable PowerShell string, or - inside a regex to pass to the -split operator - \0:

# Convert the byte array stored in the registry to a string.
$text = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetString($i.GetValue($_))

# Split the string into an *array* of strings by NUL.
# Note: -ne '' filters out empty elements (the one at the end, in your case).
$list = $text -split '\0' -ne ''

# Sort the list.
$list | Sort-Object -Unique

Upvotes: 1

Humberto Freitas
Humberto Freitas

Reputation: 483

After many attempts I discovered that it is necessary to use the Split command to make the lines break and thus be able to organize the result.

{$List = ($List -Replace("$i`:", "`n$i`:")) -Split("`n")}

Upvotes: 0

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