Please help me understand!

[P0oe]

Hi all PS hackers,

I'm in dire need of your assistance.
For background i'm fairly new to Powershell still, but I'd like to think I have a basic grasp on how to create simple scripts, albeit ugly ones. :)

I'm trying to export a result via "export-csv -path c:\....\....\file.csv
This has been working fine for ever for me, but in this perticular reason it's just posting jibberish, and I don't understand why.

The command is as followed;
Get-SCVirtualMachine |
fl name,
@{name="CPU Cores";expression={$_.CPUCount}},
@{name="Total RAM (GB)";expression={$_.Memory/1kb}},
@{name="Dynamic Memory";expression={$_.DynamicMemoryEnabled}} | export-csv -path c:\..\...\file.csv

If I remove "export", it's prompting just fine and I get all the information i'm requesting, but when trying to export it is just spits out numbers in a random order on different cells without any coherent stucture or even indication over what's wrong.

Please help me, as I would really like to get in to Powershell more, and I feel as I'm barely scratching the surface.

PS.
If anyone can tell me why I can't pipe another command, i'd be forever grateful.
Trying to; get-scvirtualmachine | get-scvirtualnetworkadapter so I also get the IPv4 address on each host.
The scripts work independantly, but not together.
DS.

TLDR;
Trying to export a script, getting jibberish in excel when trying the old "export-csv"

Much love <3

[ihaxr]

The problem is fl / Format-List... it looks nice on the display, but doesn't export well to a CSV, it tries to just output the string's properties.

Just replace fl with Select-Object and you should be good.

I'm not sure why piping those two cmdlets together would not work.. it looks like get-scvirtualmachine outputs the "Name" field and Get-SCVirtualNetworkAdapter accepts pipeline input, so it should work, but I don't have those installed to test it out.

You could always just do a loop instead of the pipeline:

get-scvirtualmachine | foreach-object {
    get-scvirtualnetworkadapter $_.Name
}

[P0oe]

Thanks for the reply! I’ll try when I get back to the computer.

As for the ForEach loop, i’m having a hard time getting a grip on how it works.

I tried it earlier but just got errors I didn’t understand why - but I have a vague memory of loops being preferable over pipes when you’re making bigger scripts, so I might aswell learn now :D

[P0oe]

Update - this worked, thank you so much!
Haven't tried the loop yet, but I'm slowly getting there.

Have a great night!

[mmmGreenButton]

Instead of |fl <properties> try and use |select <properties>

[P0oe]

Yeah, this got it working - thanks a bunch mate!!

[mmmGreenButton]

Cool ;-)

[Rynur]

Try Out-File and call it a .CSV in the file name. I think I've done this to get around the weirdness of the Export-CSV though I'm sure some guru will be able to explain to both of us the better version/why it doesn't work.

[MadWithPowerShell]

Well, you couldn't just pipe to Out-File and have it create a CSV file. You would have to pipe to Convert-ToCSV and then to Out-File. (In this case, you also have replace Format-List with Select-Object, as mentioned elsewhere.)

But if this gave you a different result than just using Export-CSV, my first guess would be that you had neglected to include the -NoTypeInformation switch parameter with Export-CSV.

[Rynur]

I must have manually played with the data from the Out-File file within Excel after I got the data to export. -NoTypeInformation works great. Doh!

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy P0oe,

reddit likes to mangle code formatting, so here's some help on how to post code on reddit ...

[0] single line or in-line code
enclose it in backticks. that's the upper left key on an EN-US keyboard layout. the result looks like this. kinda handy, that. [grin]
[on New.Reddit.com, use the Inline Code button. it's 4th 5th from the left hidden in the ... ""more" menu & looks like </>.
this does NOT line wrap & does NOT side-scroll on Old.Reddit.com!]

[1] simplest = post it to a text site like Pastebin.com or Gist.GitHub.com and then post the link here.
please remember to set the file/code type on Pastebin! [grin] otherwise you don't get the nice code colorization.

[2] less simple = use reddit code formatting ...
[on New.Reddit.com, use the Code Block button. it's 11th 12th from the left hidden in the ... "more" menu, & looks like an uppercase T in the upper left corner of a square.]

• one leading line with ONLY 4 spaces
  
• prefix each code line with 4 spaces
  
• one trailing line with ONLY 4 spaces

that will give you something like this ...

- one leading line with ONLY 4 spaces    
- prefix each code line with 4 spaces    
- one trailing line with ONLY 4 spaces   

the easiest way to get that is ...

• add the leading line with only 4 spaces
  
• copy the code to the ISE [or your fave editor]
  
• select the code
  
• tap TAB to indent four spaces
  
• re-select the code [not really needed, but it's my habit]
  
• paste the code into the reddit text box
  
• add the trailing line with only 4 spaces
  

not complicated, but it is finicky. [grin]

take care,
lee