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I have a bunch of files that I’ve downloaded to a specific folder. I need to unblock and rename files in that folder. The rename involves replacing a plus sign with a space.

$path = 'C:\Users\Richard\Downloads\Walks'

$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -File

foreach ($file in $files) { 
  Unblock-File -Path $file.FullName 
  $newname = $file.FullName -replace '\+', ' ' 
  Rename-Item -Path $file.FullName -NewName $newname 
 }

Get-ChildItem -Path $path

I initially tried using a single pipeline but Unblock-File doesn’t generate any output which also blocks the pipeline – oops.

Read the list of files into an array. Iterate over the array and Unblock each file. Then rename the file. To use the –replace operator you need to escape the plus sign.

Display the files post rename as a check.

In this post I’ll show you show to control split output – that is control the number of strings that are returned.

If you use –split with just a delimiter you’ll get a split occurring at every occurrence of the delimiter:

PS> 'SundayJanuary 01 Jan 1 New Years Day First Monday if 1st is Saturday or Sunday' -split ' ' 
SundayJanuary 
 01 
 Jan 
 1 
 New 
Years 
 Day 
 First 
 Monday 
 if 
 1st 
 is 
 Saturday 
 or 
 Sunday

But we want the holiday information to be in a single string. Rather than spending effort putting it back together you can control the number of strings that are output:

PS> 'SundayJanuary 01 Jan 1 New Years Day First Monday if 1st is Saturday or Sunday' -split ' ',5 
SundayJanuary 
 01 
 Jan 
 1 
New Years Day First Monday if 1st is Saturday or Sunday

In this case we’ve said we want 5 strings returned so everything after the 4th split is returned as a single string.

This makes our coding easier and neater

$uri = "http://www.officeholidays.com/countries/united_kingdom/index.php" 
 $html = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri 
 $holidays = ($html.ParsedHtml.getElementsByTagName("table") | 
 where ClassName -eq 'list-table' | 
 select -ExpandProperty InnerText) -split "`n"

$holidays.Count

$hols = foreach ($holiday in $holidays[1..($holidays.Count -1)]){ 
  $x = $holiday -split ' ',5 
  $y = $x[0] -split "day" 
  
  $props = [ordered]@{ 
    DayOfWeek = "$($y[0])day" 
    Day = $x[1] 
    Month = $y[1] 
    Holiday = $x[4] 
  } 
  
  New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $props 
  
 }

$hols | Format-Table -AutoSize -Wrap

When I wrote this:

https://richardspowershellblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/office-holidays/

I said that the string handling was ugly and there must be a better way – I remembered!

Office holidays are a great thing. They usually occur on public holidays. There’s a web site - www.officeholidays.com – you can use to discover the public holidays in your country. 133 countries are available - http://www.officeholidays.com/countries/index.php.

You can also use PowerShell to extract the information

$uri = "http://www.officeholidays.com/countries/united_kingdom/index.php" 
 $html = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri 
 $holidays = ($html.ParsedHtml.getElementsByTagName("table") | 
 where ClassName -eq 'list-table' | 
 select -ExpandProperty InnerText) -split "`n"

$holidays.Count

$hols = foreach ($holiday in $holidays[1..($holidays.Count -1)]){ 
  $x = $holiday -split " " 
  $y = $x[0] -split "day" 
  
  $props = [ordered]@{ 
    DayOfWeek = "$($y[0])day" 
    Day = $x[1] 
    Month = $y[1] 
    Holiday = $x[4..($x.Count-1)] -join " " 
  } 
  
  New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $props 
  
 }

$hols | Format-Table -AutoSize –Wrap

Create a string to hold the uri of the country you want. You may need to use the website to discover how they format your country name. Use Invoke-WebRequest to get the html containing the holidays. You then need to get the inner text of the html.

DayDateHolidayComments 
SundayJanuary 01 Jan 1 New Years Day First Monday if 1st is Saturday or Sunday 
MondayJanuary 02 Jan 2 Day after New Years Day Scotland Only 
MondayJanuary 02 Jan 2 New Years Day (observed) Except Scotland 
TuesdayJanuary 03 Jan 3 New Year's Day (in lieu) Scotland Only 
TuesdayFebruary 28 Feb 28 Pancake Tuesday Shrove Tuesday. Not a Public Holiday 
WednesdayMarch 01 Mar 1 St Davids Day Wales Only. Not a public holiday 
FridayMarch 17 Mar 17 St Patricks Day Northern Ireland Only 
SundayMarch 26 Mar 26 Mothering Sunday Not a National Holiday 
FridayApril 14 Apr 14 Good Friday Friday before Easter Sunday 
MondayApril 17 Apr 17 Easter Monday Except Scotland 
SundayApril 23 Apr 23 St George's Day England Only. Not a public holiday 
MondayMay 01 May 1 Early May Bank Holiday First Monday in May 
MondayMay 29 May 29 Spring Bank Holiday Last Monday in May 
SundayJune 18 Jun 18 Father's Day 3rd Sunday in June. Not a public holiday 
WednesdayJuly 12 Jul 12 Battle of the Boyne Northern Ireland Only 
MondayAugust 07 Aug 7 August Bank Holiday Scotland Only. First Monday in August 
MondayAugust 28 Aug 28 August Bank Holiday Last Monday in August (except Scotland) 
SundayNovember 05 Nov 5 Guy Fawkes Night England Only. Not a public holiday 
SundayNovember 12 Nov 12 Remembrance Sunday Not a public holiday. Sunday closest to 11 November 
ThursdayNovember 30 Nov 30 St Andrews Day Scotland Only. If November 30 falls on a weekend, the next Monday is a bank ho liday instead 
MondayDecember 25 Dec 25 Christmas Day 
TuesdayDecember 26 Dec 26 Boxing Day

Its a single string but does contain new line characters so you can split it into an array.

Iterate through the array – skip the first line – and extract the day of the week, the day, month and holiday details. Create an object for output. Display the objects to see your holidays.

DayOfWeek Day Month    Holiday                                                 
 --------- --- -----    -------                                                 
 Sunday    01  January  New Years Day First Monday if 1st is Saturday or Sunday 
 Monday    02  January  Day after New Years Day Scotland Only                   
 Monday    02  January  New Years Day (observed) Except Scotland                
 Tuesday   03  January  New Year's Day (in lieu) Scotland Only                  
 Tuesday   28  February Pancake Tuesday Shrove Tuesday. Not a Public Holiday    
 Wednesday 01  March    St Davids Day Wales Only. Not a public holiday          
 Friday    17  March    St Patricks Day Northern Ireland Only                   
 Sunday    26  March    Mothering Sunday Not a National Holiday                 
 Friday    14  April    Good Friday Friday before Easter Sunday                 
 Monday    17  April    Easter Monday Except Scotland                           
 Sunday    23  April    St George's Day England Only. Not a public holiday      
 Monday    01  May      Early May Bank Holiday First Monday in May              
 Monday    29  May      Spring Bank Holiday Last Monday in May                  
 Sunday    18  June     Father's Day 3rd Sunday in June. Not a public holiday   
 Wednesday 12  July     Battle of the Boyne Northern Ireland Only               
 Monday    07  August   August Bank Holiday Scotland Only. First Monday in 
                        August                                                  
 Monday    28  August   August Bank Holiday Last Monday in August (except       
                       Scotland)                                               
 Sunday    05  November Guy Fawkes Night England Only. Not a public holiday     
 Sunday    12  November Remembrance Sunday Not a public holiday. Sunday closest 
                       to 11 November                                          
 Thursday  30  November St Andrews Day Scotland Only. If November 30 falls on a 
                       weekend, the next Monday is a bank holiday instead      
 Monday    25  December Christmas Day                                           
 Tuesday   26  December Boxing Day

I’ve used some rather ugly, brute force string handling. There should be a better way to extracting the data from the string but I need to think about it

A post on the forum about using a variable as a where clause looked interesting. What the user wanted to do was to define a variable that contained the filter to be used by Where-Object.

As an example consider filtering the output of Get-Service to display only services that are stopped

PS> Get-Service | where Status -eq "Stopped"

You have to revert to the old style syntax

PS> Get-Service | where {$_.Status -eq "Stopped"}

The answer then becomes to create a scriptblock for the filter

PS> $filter = {$_.Status -eq "Stopped"} 
 PS> Get-Service | where $filter

You could then use the filters like this

function gs { 
  param ( 
  [string]$status 
  )

switch ($status){ 
   "Running" {$filter = {$_.Status -eq "Running"}; break} 
   "Stopped" {$filter = {$_.Status -eq "Stopped"}; break} 
   default   {$filter = {$_.Status -like "*"}; break} 
 }

Get-Service | where $filter
}

PS> gs -status Running
PS> gs -status stopped
PS> gs -status *

If you need a variable as a where clause then use a scriptblock.

Interesting question on the forum regarding finding files with a file name starting with a space.

First problem was creating some files to match the criteria. Renaming in file explorer didn’t work so back to PowerShell

PS> Rename-Item -Path C:\test\file1.txt -NewName "C:\test\ file1.txt"

PS> Rename-Item -Path C:\test\junk.txt -NewName "C:\test\ junk.txt"

Make sure you put the new name in quotes so the space is included as part of the file name

After that its actually quite easy

PS> Get-ChildItem -Path C:\test\ -Filter ' *.txt'


    Directory: C:\test


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name 
 ----                -------------         ------ ---- 
 -a----       30/06/2017     15:38             16  file1.txt 
-a----       30/06/2017     10:50             26  junk.txt

Use the Filter parameter and specify ' *.txt' as the pattern you want to match