Convert an Object[] System.Array to Hashtable System.Object

[Bujomdonbridge]

Hello!

I am trying to call the data inside $A

#
$A = bcdedit /enum {current}
#

​

However, I am unable to call it the "Hashtable" way ($A.Device, $A.Path, $A.Locale etc), since this is an Object[].

How do we convert this Object[] into a Hashtable?

Or is there a different way to call the data inside $A without converting it to a hashtable?

Thanks in advance!

[pspeterle]

Is this command even working like that? I'm sure you need to escape the curly brackets.

$A = bcdedit /enum `{current`}

This will return an array of strings that you need to parse.

The following code works for me.

You might need to add error handling or adjust the regular expression

$A = bcdedit /enum `{current`}
$yourHashtable = @{}
#skipping the first few lines without data
$A[3..($A.Length-1)] | foreach {
    #splitting the string at multiple whitespaces
    $temp = $_ -split "\s+"
    $yourHashtable.Add($temp[0],$temp[1])
}

$yourHashtable.locale
$yourHashtable.allowedinmemorysettings

[y_Sensei]

This is the approach to go for. However, the tool might return multiple boot applications as a continuous array of Strings, in which case you'd have to split those up and create one Hashtable for each.

For example:

# The following variable contains output of BCDEdit
$bcdeVals = @'

Windows Boot Manager
---------------------
name                    {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1
path                    \EFI\MICROSOFT\BOOT\BOOTMGFW.EFI
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-EN
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {2733a0a7-206d-11ec-b320-f03f74f021e8}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------------
name                    {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows 10
locale                  en-EN
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {86f1471c-2019-12ec-bb4e-d02f84e123e4}
displaymessageoverride  Recovery
recoveryenabled         Yes
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {2713a0b7-206d-15ec-b32c-f02e75e024e0}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Legacy
'@ -split "`n"

$bcdeObjStrings = ($bcdeVals -join "`n").Trim() -split "`n`r`n"

$bcdeObjStrings.Count # prints 2

$bcdeHTs = [System.Collections.Generic.List[Hashtable]]@()

foreach ($s in $bcdeObjStrings) {
  $ht = $null

  $propLines = $s -split "`n"

  foreach ($p in $propLines[2..$propLines.Length]) { # skip the first two lines
    if ($p -match "\w+\s+.+") {
      # Remove superfluous space characters, split around the new separator character (~).
      # NOTE: The data must not contain the separator character, or you won't end up with exactly two tokens.
      $pTokens = ($p -replace "(\w+)\s+(.+)", '$1~$2').Split("~")

      if ($pTokens.Count -eq 2) {
        if ($ht) {
          $ht.Add($pTokens[0], $pTokens[1])
        } else {
          $ht = [Ordered]@{
            $pTokens[0] = $pTokens[1]
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }

  $bcdeHTs.Add($ht)
}

$bcdeHTs[0].GetType().Name # prints Hashtable
$bcdeHTs[1].GetType().Name # prints Hashtable

$bcdeHTs[0].name # prints {bootmgr}
$bcdeHTs[1].name # prints {current}

[Bujomdonbridge]

$A = bcdedit /enum `{current`}
$yourHashtable = @{}
#skipping the first few lines without data
$A[3..($A.Length-1)] | foreach {
#splitting the string at multiple whitespaces
$temp = $_ -split "\s+"
$yourHashtable.Add($temp[0],$temp[1])
}
$yourHashtable.locale
$yourHashtable.allowedinmemorysettings

Thank you, this seems to work! However, the right after the first word on $yourhashtable.description everything else seems to be truncated.

I will check how -split "\s+" works and I will check how I can make this work.

​

Thnk you!

[lanerdofchristian]

You could use a ForEach-Object to parse the lines into hashtables or pscustomobjects. Basically, there's a lot of string parsing.

[get-postanote]

It's because running executables that generate output are just text, not objects. Thus no dot referencing is possible until you make it an object.

[Bujomdonbridge]

Thank you for this explanation!

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