I am trying to validate strings of text taken from PC descriptions in Active Directory.
But I want to remove rogue characters like a single value of "??" from any text before validating any text.
I have this test code as an example. But whenever it hits the random character "??"
It throws this error:
Error:
parsing "??" - Quantifier {x,y} following nothing.
At C:\Users\#####\OneDrive\Workingscripts\testscripts\removeingfromarray.ps1:11 char:5
If ($charigmorematch -match $descstr)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CategoryInfo : OperationStopped: (:) [], ArgumentException
FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.ArgumentException
When all I want to do is remove it from the array! Any help greatly appreciated.
This is the example code I have.
##Type characters to remove in array.
$charigmorematch = @("?"; "@"; "$")
##array declare
$userdesc = @()
###Where this would be an AD description from AD.
$ADUser = "Offline - ?? - test"
###Split AD Descrip into individual strings
$userdesc = $ADUser.Split("-").Trim()
###Run through them to check for rogue characters to remove
ForEach($descstr in $userdesc)
{
###If match found try and take it out
If ($charigmorematch -match $descstr)
{
###Store match in variable.
$strmatch = ($charigmorematch -match $descstr)
###Get the index of the string
$indexstr = $userdesc.indexof($descstr)
Write=host "Match: $strmatch Index: $indexstr"
###Once found a match of a rogue character then remove from the array!
##But I haven't figured out that code yet.
###Then a command to remove the string from the array with the index number.
###In this case it's likely to be [1] to remove. But the code has to work that out.
}
}
CodePudding user response:
# Sample input.
$ADUser = "Offline - ?? - test"
# Split into tokens by "-", potentially surrounded by spaces,
# and filter out tokens that contain '?', '@', or '$'.
($ADUser -split ' *- *') -notmatch '[?@$]'
The result is the following array of tokens: 'Offline', 'test'
Note that -notmatch
, like all comparison operators that (also) operate on strings, acts as a filter with an array as the LHS, as is the case here (-split
always returns an an array).
Based on the additional requirements you mentioned in later comments, you're probably looking for something like this (splitting by -
or |
, trimming of surrounding (...)
):
# Sample input
$ADUser = "Notebook PC | (Win 10) | E1234567 - simple ^^ user | Location ?? not @ set"
($ADUser -split ' *[-|] *') -notmatch '[?@$]' -replace '^\(|\)$'
This results in the following array of tokens: 'Notebook PC', 'Win 10', 'E1234567', 'simple ^^ user'
Note that unless your input strings have leading or trailing spaces, there is no need for calling .Trim()
As for what you tried:
$charigmorematch -match $descstr
The -match
operator:
requires the input string(s) to be the LHS operand.
requires a regex (regular expression) as the RHS operand, to formulate a pattern that the input is matched against.
By contrast, your attempted operation:
mistakenly reversed the order of operands (
$descstr
, as the string in which to look for regex patterns must be the LHS).mistakenly used an array as the comparison pattern (
$charigmorematch
), instead of a (single) regex (expressed as a string) that uses a character set ([...]
) to specify the characters of interest.