Inline arrays in PowerShell

28 Sep

Sometimes I want to process a list of “things” easily in PowerShell where the list is not in an external file but in the script itself.

Ideally this list would not be separated by e.g. a comma so it can be easily copy/pasted from external data sources.

Something like this:

$List = @("
John Doe
Jane Doe
James Bond
And so the list goes on
")

$List = @("

John Doe

Jane Doe

James Bond

And so the list goes on

With a little trickery we can!

$List = @("
John Doe
Jane Doe
James Bond
And so the list goes on
") -split "`n" | where {[byte]$_[1] -ne 0x0}

foreach ($Entry in $List)
{
	"Performing surgery on $Entry"
}

$List = @("

John Doe

Jane Doe

James Bond

And so the list goes on

") -split "`n" | where {[byte]$_[1] -ne 0x0}

foreach ($Entry in $List)

{

"Performing surgery on $Entry"

}

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Filed under: PowerShell

2 Responses for "Inline arrays in PowerShell"

oxtan September 28th, 2011 at 15:34 1
and people complain about Perl being line noise 😀
my @list = qw(one two three four five six seven) ;
for my $entry ( @list ) {
say “The number is $entry” ;
}
Remko September 28th, 2011 at 15:59 2
Does it work in perl when you split on several lines?
my @list = qw(
one
two
three
…