Extracting part of a host name with select-object

Question

I have a simple powershell function where I provide the log type and event and it scans all of our SQL servers. it works except the host name is returned as hostname.domain.local. I want it to return just the host name. I've tried machinename.split('.') and substring and it won't work. I've tried putting the select-object into a separate variable and was going to join it with the rest of the columns, but it takes too long to run.

Here is my sample scrap code i'm testing with before I change my function along with the commented out parts that didn't work. Looked around and found lots of resources about the commands, but they don't work when I try to use them in my script.

The error I keep getting is A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument '. '.

$servers = Get-Content -literalpath   "C:\temp\sql_servers3.txt" 
#$server
#$result = 
ForEach($box in $servers) {Get-Eventlog -ComputerName $box -LogName 
application -After 1-4-2018 -Entrytype Error | Where {$_.source -notin 
'Perfnet','Perflib', 'ntfs', 'vss'}| select-object -property MachineName}  
#$result_Host_name = select-object -inputobject $result -property 
 'MachineName'
 #'TimeGenerated', 'MachineName'.Split('.')[1], 'EventID','message'}
 #| Where {$_.source -notin 'Perfnet','Perflib', 'ntfs', 'vss'} 0
 #return $result_Host_name

Give an example of a line from your text file and what you are trying to extract as the computer name. — Bill_Stewart
– Bill_Stewart, Commented Jan 5, 2018 at 19:02
The text file is just a list of servers that I'm scanning. I'm looping through it and running get-eventlog for each one. The default doesn't give me the columns I want so I added a select-object at the end to output four columns including MachineName. that one outputs as a full DNS name as hostname.domain.local and I just wanted the hostname part. — Alen
– Alen, Commented Jan 5, 2018 at 19:10

BenH · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-05 19:04:05Z

1

What you are looking for is a "Calculated Property" when using Select-Object.

| Select-Object @{n='HostName';e={($_.MachineName -split '\.')[0]}}

answered Jan 5, 2018 at 19:04

BenH

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3 Comments

Alen Over a year ago

That took the entire column out of the result set.

BenH Over a year ago

@Alen What do you mean took the entire column out of the result set? It should have returned only the Hostnames. IF you want all of the other properties you can put add a * (or whichever properties you want comma delimited) e.g. | Select-Object *,@{n='HostName';e={($_.MachineName -split '\.')[0]}} and this will return all of the properties plus the hostname

Alen Over a year ago

sorry, made a mistake with brackets. Looks like it's working and i'm testing now with your code plus the three other columns I need

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