Question

I am writing a script which will basically do the following:

Read from a text file some arguments:

DriveLetter ThreeLetterCode ServerName VolumeLetter Integer

Eg. W MSS SERVER01 C 1

These values happen to form a folder destination W:\MSS\, and a filename which works in the following naming convention:

SERVERNAME_VOLUMELETTER_VOL-b00X-iYYY.spi - Where The X is the Integer above

The value Y I need to work out later, as this happens to be the value of the incremental image (backups) and I need to work out the latest incremental.

So at the moment –> Count lines in file, and loop for this many lines.

$lines = Get-Content -Path PostBackupCheck-Textfile.txt  | Measure-Object -Line
for ($i=0; $i -le $lines.Lines; $i++)

Within this loop I need to do a Get-Content to read off the line I am currently looking at i.e. line 0, line 1, line 2, as there will be multiple lines in the format I wrote at the beginning and split the line into an array, whereby each part of the file, as seen above naming convention, is in a[0], a[1], a[2]. etc

The reason for this is because, I need to then sort the folder that contains these, find the latest file, by date, and take the _iXXX.spi part and place this into the array value a[X] so I then have a complete filename to mount. This value will replace iYYY.spi

It’s a little complex because I also have to make sure when I do a Get-ChildItem with -Include before I sort it all by date, I am only including the filename that matches the arguments fed to it from the text file :

So,

SERVER01_C_VOL-b001-iYYY.spi and not anything else. 
i.e. not  SERVER01_D_VOL-b001-iYYY.spi

Then take the iYYY value from the sort on the Get-ChildItem -Include and place that into the appropriate array item.

I’ve literally no idea where to start, so any ideas are appreciated!

Hopefully I’ve explained in enough detail. I have also placed the code on Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/vtFifTW6

Answer 1

This doesn’t need to be that complex. You can start by operating over lines in your file with a simple pipeline:

Get-Content PostBackupCheck-Textfile.txt |
  Foreach-Object {
    $drive, $folder, $server, $volume, [int]$i = -split $_
    ...
  }

The line inside the loop splits the current input line at spaces and assigns appropriate variables. This saves you the trouble of handling an array there. Everything that follows needs to be in said loop as well.

You can then construct the file name pattern:

$filename = "$server_$drive_VOL-b$($i.ToString('000'))-i*.spi"

which you can use to find all fitting files and sort them by date:

$lastFile = Get-ChildItem $filename | sort LastWriteTime | select -last 1