I am stuck again.  I am trying to go through a directory of procs, dumping out the table names used.

$procnames = dir "*.prc" -name
foreach ($procname in $procnames) {
    get-content $procname |
    where-object {$_ -match "_tbl"} |
}

Hmm, let's see. I think this ought to do it. :)

select-string _tbl *.prc

Let the pipeline do the work for you!! The below one liner will return every line that contains _TBL.  Where you go from there is up to you... Just remember that your not getting text!!!!  Your getting an object back, so you can do anything with it.  Export-cvs, Custom Object, out-file the options are endless.  Just Don't think of it as text flying across the screen. :)

If you posted a small sample of the files your parsing I could try to be more help.

dir "*.prc" | %{ Get-Content $_.FullName | ?{$_ -match "_tbl"}}

spelled out

Get-ChildItem "*.prc" | ForEach-Object { Get-Content $_.FullName | Where-Object { $_ -match "_tbl"}}

-Glenn

The parsing seems to work fine, it was getting the objects flying by into a variable I couldn't manage.

If I set it up as $NewFile = dir *.prc | foreach....  I'd get an error pointing at the word In, if I added the "|  $newfile" within the foreach {} I'd end up with only the output from the last input file, or once I got the true/false result of the compare.  Yet, the expected output scrolled down the screen.  So I know I have a syntax problem, but I can't see it,even with the reading glasses on.

The parsing seems to work fine, it was getting the objects flying by into a variable I couldn't manage.

If I set it up as $NewFile = dir *.prc | foreach....  I'd get an error pointing at the word In, if I added the "|  $newfile" within the foreach {} I'd end up with only the output from the last input file, or once I got the true/false result of the compare.  Yet, the expected output scrolled down the screen.  So I know I have a syntax problem, but I can't see it,even with the reading glasses on.

A long time ago I heard "to a man with a hammer every problem looks like a nail".  Still true and obviously I need to expand the number of tools I'm using.

This ends up not only being short, but allowing me to save the output to a variable.

And then there is the next opportunity.  I saved the output to $tblName2

$tblName2 | %{$_.line} | Select-String  "^\s*--\.*"

Returns all the things, commented lines, I want to exclude. 

Select-String has a -notmatch parameter that I couldn't get to work I plugged it in after the string and get the message the parameter does not exist.

$tblName2 | %{(($_.line).trim())} | Select-String -pattern "^\s*[^--]\.*"

This worked, but I had to add the trim to get rid of whitespace. Comments that began indented were not being deleted. Shouldn't "^\s*" say to ignore 0 or more occurences of tabs and spaces and find a leading --?

. And to go back to the original question on this thread, what is the difference between foreach and foreach-object? When I tried to assign a value to a variable using foreach-object ($procname in $procs){} PS gave me a syntax error. Eliminating the (line in group) and the foreach-object for the dir | foreach {} works as expected. I'd really like to understand, rather than try one and then switch if it doesn't work. [please see foreach thread --hal]

How about something like this...

$out = @()
dir "*.prc" |%{ $current=$_.fullname ; Get-Content $_.FullName |%{ $_.trim()|% {$_.split(" ") }|? { $_ -match "_tbl"}}| %{$out += $_ | select @{e={$_};n='tbl'},@{e={$current};n='file'}}}

Then to drill down just use group-object.

$out | group-object tbl

you get the Idea, sorry i took so long to respond.  Thank you for posting that file this one was actually kinda fun!  Good grief I love this tool... Do you know how many lines of perl or VBscript it would taken to do the same thing!!!!!

-Glenn

Thanks for the help, from everyone.

By the time I got most of the script working I figured out it wasn't going to do anything constructive for what I had to get done.  On the other hand, I've used some of the techniques and gotten a little smarter having gone through this.

kct

Firewall caught me when I originally tried to post and by the time I'd got past firewall, post was gone to the bit bucket.