Custom table output cleanup - formatting array-valued properties

Question

My one liner looks like:

get-vm vm* |select name, numcpu,memoryGB,@{e={$_|get-harddisk |select capacityGB};l="disk"}

My output looks like:

Name            NumCpu MemoryGB disk
----            ------ -------- ----
vm1             4      96       {@{CapacityGB=60}, @{CapacityGB=300}, @{CapacityGB=200}}
vm2             8      98       {@{CapacityGB=50}, @{CapacityGB=450}}
vm3             8      96       {@{CapacityGB=200}, @{CapacityGB=50}, @{CapacityGB=300}}
vm4             2      12       {@{CapacityGB=100}, @{CapacityGB=50}}

How can I clean up that output to only show the disk size numbers and not all the @{capacityGB= }?

What output were you expecting? (Hint: How should PowerShell output when there is more than one disk?) — Bill_Stewart
– Bill_Stewart, Commented Feb 22, 2017 at 20:58

Frode F. · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-22 21:27:32Z

Use Select-Object -ExpandProperty to extract the value of the property. That will remove @{CapacityGB= which is shown because you have an array of objects with a CapacityGB-property. Ex:

Get-VM vm* | Select-Object Name, NumCPU,MemoryGB,@{l="Disk";e={$_ | Get-HardDisk | Select-Object -Expand CapacityGB}}

Name NumCPU MemoryGB Disk          
---- ------ -------- ----          
vm1       4       96 {60, 300, 200}
vm2       8       98 {50, 450}

To remove the remaining { } which represents an array of values, you can combine them to a string:

Get-VM vm* | Select-Object Name, NumCPU,MemoryGB,@{l="Disk";e={($_ | Get-HardDisk | Select-Object -Expand CapacityGB) -join ', '}}

Name NumCPU MemoryGB Disk        
---- ------ -------- ----        
vm1       4       96 60, 300, 200
vm2       8       98 50, 450

Or if you only want this for console output, you could add linebreaks, but this requires Format-Table -Wrap to display properly in PowerShell

#Output from Format-Table is not exportable. It just results in formatdata-objects
Get-VM vm* |
Select-Object Name, NumCPU, MemoryGB, @{l="Disk";e={($_ | Get-HardDisk | Select-Object -Expand CapacityGB) -join "`n" }} |
Format-Table -Wrap

Name NumCPU MemoryGB Disk      
---- ------ -------- ----      
vm1       4       96 60        
                     300       
                     200       
vm2       8       98 50        
                     450

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:25:55Z

The immediate fix is to use select -ExpandProperty capacityGB:

get-vm vm* |select name, numcpu,memoryGB,@{e={$_|get-harddisk |select -ExpandProperty capacityGB};l="disk"}

This would result in something like:

Name            NumCpu MemoryGB disk
----            ------ -------- ----
vm1             4       96      {60, 300, 200}

-ExpandProperty means that only the specified property's value should be returned, not a custom object that has the specified property, which is what something like @{CapacityGB=60} represents in your output.

Note that PowerShell:

uses enclosing { ... } to represent an array-valued property
with the individual elements represented as they would be if you cast them to [string] (or used them in a double-quoted string).

If the output is for display only, and you want different formatting, build your own output string inside the script block, as shown in Frode F.'s helpful answer.

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