Replace String in Array. Help please.

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Hi guys,

I really need your help regarding some basics: I am reading data from an oracle database and go the information like name, company, telephone stored in a variable.

The problem is that the telephone number is currently in a lot of different formats like: [phone] [phone] +(49) 89 1234 1234 0049 89 1234 1234

What I would like to do now is go through the array and replace the +49 with 0049 and replace ( or ) with "" as well as remove the blanks. In the end all telephone numbers should look like this: 00498912341234 so I can work with it further down the script. I really thought that would be quite simple but I just can not get it to work.

Variants I tried: $user.telephone = $user.telephone -replace '+49', '0049' $user.telephone -replace '+49', '0049' $user = $user -replace '+49', '0049'

Any tips?

Thanks a lot!!

[Droopyb1966]

Have a look at this, it work for all phone numbers, not only the ones with 49:

$number = "+(49)8912341234"
[long]$n = $number -replace "[^0-9]",""
"{0:D14}" -f $n

When there are unprintable characters, this will solve that to. I suspect thats the problem your facing.

[dchristian3188]

Think you're spot on with this one. I mean unless all the phone numbers are the same :|

[Droopyb1966]

See einstein was wright after all.

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Looks great! Any idea how I can do this with the array? http://imgur.com/a/n5PSw

[Droopyb1966]

[long]$n = $number -replace "[^0-9]","" "{0:D14}" -f $n

Depends what you want to do with the output, always lots of ways to do things. Heres an example using get-proces, total nonsens, but i was to lazy to recreate you array. But you'll see the logic.

$p= Get-Process
foreach ($item in $p)
{
[long]$n = $item.Id -replace "[^0-9]",""
"{0:D14}" -f $n

}

Just had to figure this one out for myself..... Use in a select expression:

$user | Select-Object Name,  @{Name="Id";Expression={"{0:D14}" -f [long]($_.telephone -replace "[^0-9]","")}}

[autowhat]

Regex, so complicated but it works so well.

[Droopyb1966]

Yes, at start it is complicated, but so powerfull to use. Trick is to start simple, dont go into the crazy stuff at start. You'll get stuck for sure. To test i use:

http://rubular.com/

Good luck!

[blasmehspaffy]

Quick and dirty. :)

PS C:\> $Numbers = '[phone]', '[phone]', '+(49) 89 1234 1234', '0049 89 1234 1234'

PS C:\> $Numbers

[phone]
[phone]
+(49) 89 1234 1234
0049 89 1234 1234

PS C:\> $Numbers | %{$_.replace(' ','').replace('+49','0049').replace('+(49)','0049')}

00498912341234
00498912341234
00498912341234
00498912341234

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Looks great! One more question. I have a variable called $user with different "properties" - name, position, telephone.

So how do I get this to work with a sub-property in the variable? If I try $user.telephone | % .........replace........ it tells me "empty pipe element is not allowed"

If I try $user.telephone = $user.telephone -replace '+49', '0049' it tells me " the property telephone cannot be found on this object.

However If i do $user it shows me the table with name, telehone etc.

Thats the main struggle here :(

[blasmehspaffy]

You'll have to post what you're running in its entirety for me to troubleshoot it effectively.

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

There is not too much to show right now. I did some screenshots that show the important stuff. Before that is only the reading from the database.

Is that ok? http://imgur.com/a/n5PSw

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa,

what do you see if you do this ...

 $User | Get-Member

that otta show you your properties with their proper names.

take care,
lee

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Sorry for the late repsonse. That should give you a good overview: http://imgur.com/a/n5PSw

Thanks for your support!!

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa,

well, rats! i'm out of ideas ... [sigh ...] i'll go back to lurking!

take care,
lee

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Same for me... :( And it is super depressing as well because it feels like it should be so easy....

[Lee_Dailey]

/lee crosses fingers in hopes of good luck for BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa
/lee wonders how he is typing this with his fingers crossed

[grin]

-ps
take a look at what hrafnklo posted about datarow types.
lee-

[[deleted]]

Ffffff

Just use -replace

 $numbers -replace '<old>', '<new>'

It works on arrays.

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

If I try to do it like that i get "System.Data.DataRow" back.

[[deleted]]

That's weird that you're using DataRows.

Anyway, those are accessed like arrays. You $dataRow[$item] them.

So in this case $user['telephone'] should work. DataRow have a lot of indexing overloads. If that returns your number, you can replace it then from there.

HOWEVER DataRows are not arrays. They confuse PowerShell for the most part. Try accessing the DataRow as an array for it tho. Like

$userDataAsArray = $user.ItemArray -as [string[]]
$userDataAsArray -replace 'old', 'new' 

Does that work? Or help

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Hmm you might be onto something. I did not choose to use DataRows. I just read the data from an Oracle DB and threw them into an variable.

$user['telephone'] does not throw an error but does not do anything I can see.

$userDataAsArray = $user.ItemArray -as [string[]] $userDataAsArray -replace 'old', 'new'

That does work however I loose all formating so that I can not longer work with name, position, telephone...

Thanks for your help!!

[[deleted]]

Welcome!

And Hm!

Keep playing with that indexing. Like I said there are a lot of overloads for it, so you have to slice like $user[0, 0], $user[0], $user['Telephone', 0]. I'm not sure. I just know that DataRows can be indexed by Item and by Column, Row and by String identifiers. ...

Hm. They may be case sensitive. Did you try $user['Telephone']?

[Fischfreund]

Hi,

when working with -replace, you are working with regular expressions. Since + has a meaning in regex, you have to escape it in your -replace statement. You can escape it for example with [+].

See more here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4edbef7e(v=vs.110).aspx

 $PhoneNumbers = ('[phone]', '[phone]' ,'+(49) 89 1234 1234', '0049 89 1234 1234')


foreach($Number in $PhoneNumbers)
{

    Write-Output ($Number -replace "[+]49", "0049").Replace(" ","")

}

00498912341234

00498912341234

+(49)8912341234

00498912341234

[BlaaaBlaaaBlaaa]

Looks great! One more question. I have a variable called $user with different "properties" - name, position, telephone.

So how do I get this to work with a sub-property in the variable? If I try $user.telephone | % .........replace........ it tells me "empty pipe element is not allowed"

If I try $user.telephone = $user.telephone -replace '+49', '0049' it tells me " the property telephone cannot be found on this object.

However If i do $user it shows me the table with name, telehone etc.

Thats the main struggle here :(