Using a search string read another string

Question

Have a text file with so many contents like this:

AllocatedStorage           : 5
InstanceName               : snapshotinstance
SnapshotName               : Testsnapshot
SnapshotCreateTime         : 8/26/2015 8:34:47 AM

AllocatedStorage           : 5
InstanceName               : snapshotinstance
SnapshotName               : Backupsnapshot
SnapshotCreateTime         : 7/31/2015 8:00:00 AM

I need to read a specific string (which is read from another file) and if an exact match is found then I need to retrieve another string which is there within that block. For example, suppose if my search string is "7/31/2015 8:00:00 AM" then I need to retrieve SnapshotName for that specific block.

Is there a way to achieve this? Any help would be really appreciated.

DarkLite1 · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-31 10:05:45Z

1

Something like this maybe:

$File = Get-Content -Path 'S:\Test\File.txt'
$SearchTerm = '7/31/2015 8:00:00 AM'

$LineNr = $File | Select-String -Pattern $SearchTerm | Select-Object -ExpandProperty LineNumber
$File[$LineNr-2] | Split-String ':' | Select-Object -Last 1

answered Aug 31, 2015 at 10:05

DarkLite1

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Comments

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-31 12:20:18Z

I was looking at your data and it looked like a good candidate for ConvertFrom-StringData. Lets use regex to split up your log file into is property groups and create PowerShell Objects from the data.

$snapshotData = (Get-Content -Raw "c:\temp\log.log")  -split '\s+(?=AllocatedStorage)' | ForEach-Object {
    # ConvertFrom-StringData needs name=value so we convert the colons.
    $Stringdata = $_-replace '\s+:','='
    New-Object PSObject -Property  $(ConvertFrom-StringData $Stringdata)
}

Using \s+: helps ensure we don't replace the colons inside the date strings. Now you can search the data and return what you are looking for.

$snapshotData | Where-Object{$_.SnapshotCreateTime -eq "7/31/2015 8:00:00 AM"} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty SnapshotName

Which would return: Backupsnapshot. Using custom objects can make it easier to get more complex data quickly.

Since we use -Raw you would need PowerShell 3.0 but could easily be replace with Out-String instead if need be.

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