CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
Black Shark
Black Shark

Reputation: 73

Is there a way to put a counter column when doing Get commands in PowerShell?

I need to extract a Get command results into a CSV. The order column should be automatically generated upon a call and give each object its counter upon its appearance in the list. Would this be possible?

For example, when I'd do something like

Get-VMHost | Select @{N="Order";E={$suborder++}}, Name, Version, Build | Export-Csv -path .\smth.csv

I would like to get a result like

Order Name        Version   Build   
----- ----        -------   -----   
    1 servername1   1.1.1   11111111
    2 servername2   1.1.1   11111111
    3 servername3   1.1.1   11111111

Would this be possible without using an array?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 127

Answers (1)

Mathias R. Jessen
Mathias R. Jessen

Reputation: 174485

There are two problems with the current approach:

  1. Unary ++ doesn't output anything by default
  2. Select-Object runs property expressions in their own scope, so you're not actually updating $suborder, you're creating a new local variable every time.

The first problem can be solved by wrapping the operation in the grouping operator (...):

... | Select @{N="Order";E={($suborder++)}}, ...

The second problem can be solved by obtaining a reference to an object that exposes the suborder value as a property.

You can either use a hashtable or a custom object to "host" the counter:

$counter = @{ suborder = 1 }

... | Select @{N="Order";E={($counter['suborder']++)}}

... or you can make PowerShell wrap the original variable in a PSRef-wrapper by using the [ref] keyword:

$suborder = 1

... | Select @{N="Order";E={(([ref]$suborder).Value++)}}

Upvotes: 4

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