Question

I’ve got a folder that gets filled with a bunch of log files that need to be moved into sub-folders every so often. For example, I need to get the following files into the directories at the arrow.

SOME_FILE_341213.txt –> SMPROD
SOME_FILE_341242.txt –> SMPROD
OTHER_FILE_13423.log –> SSBRPRD
ALTER_FILE_13423.log –> SSBRPRD
geofile12321 –> REGIONPROD

I’ve seen lots of solutions that will parse out part of a file name and move it into a directory containing that parse of the file name. In my case, the destination directories will not really match up to a parsed part of the file names. I was thinking I could use a switch statement to match the first 4 or 5 letters to cases that would move files into the appropriate directories but I’m not sure that’s the most efficient way to go about it. I would have about 25 cases to match to. For files that didn’t match any case I would leave them where they are. Any advice?

Answer 1

I would go with the switch statement in a for-each loop. Something like this:

$Files = Dir c:\test

foreach ($file in $files) {
    switch ($file.ToString().Substring(0,2)) {
        "te" {Write-Host "te"; break}
        "li" {Write-Host "li"; break}
        "ts" {Write-Host "ts"; break}

    } #End switch
} #End foreach

On the substring(x,y) command, the overload is:

1. x = starting character
2. y = number of characters to pull

Obviously replace the write-host with what you actually want to do. The switch statement can span multiple lines. Don’t forget the break at the end, so you don’t go through all 25 options for every file.