PowerShell/CLI: “Foreach” loop with multiple arrays

Question

I'm trying to get my brain round something and on the verge of head explosion. I have a list of data listing usernames, and virtual machines.

for example:

username      servername
bob.lazar     abc001
bob.lazar     abc002
peter.bob     ght004
bob.lazar     abc006

I need to collate the user data so I can email them listing. if I loop through and email it would mail bob 3x times, but I need to email bob once with 3 server names. I assume I need to put the data into a multidimential array and loop through but just don't know where to begin.

$data | group username | % { do something }

user4003407
– user4003407

2016-07-06 12:49:50 +00:00
Commented Jul 6, 2016 at 12:49 — user4003407
– user4003407, Commented Jul 6, 2016 at 12:49

Jeffrey Snover - MSFT · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-06 12:57:02Z

2

I didn't fully understand the problem but I'm pretty sure you are looking for the GROUP cmdlet. Pipe a collection to it and specify what property you want to group things by and then all the elements are available as a GROUP property

JPS> dir |group extension |? Name -eq ".txt" | % Group


    Directory: C:\temp


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         6/2/2016   8:23 PM          57930 foo.txt
-a----       12/21/2015   8:00 PM           8265 ModuleSessions.ps1.t
-a----        3/15/2016   6:26 PM             51 num.txt
-a----         6/6/2015   6:55 PM           2390 t2.txt

Alternatively, you can use -AsHashtable to return a hashtable with the property as a key

JPS> (dir |group Extension -AsHashTable)[".txt"]


    Directory: C:\temp


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         6/2/2016   8:23 PM          57930 foo.txt
-a----       12/21/2015   8:00 PM           8265 ModuleSessions.ps1.txt
-a----        3/15/2016   6:26 PM             51 num.txt
-a----         6/6/2015   6:55 PM           2390 t2.txt

Experiment with those.

answered Jul 6, 2016 at 12:57

Jeffrey Snover - MSFT

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2 Comments

Richard Smith Over a year ago

I need to email the user in question a list of server names, I can look up the user against AD to get the email address, and email them all the server names that match.

Richard Smith Over a year ago

I'm gathering I can use group, then use a foreach to loop through the names

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