Like many of you, I dream about hitting the lottery and retiring to live the good life. Unfortunately I rarely play so I guess my odds are winning are pretty slim. But for the latest installment of Friday Fun, I thought I would have PowerShell help me pick some numbers for PowerBall. It is not as easy as you might think and you might pick up a thing or two about objects, arrays and loops.<\/p>\n
To play Powerball you need to pick five numbers between 1 and 59 and 1 PowerBall number between 1 and 42. The PowerBall number is easy to get from PowerShell with Get-Random.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nPS C:\\> Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 42
\n41
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
Getting the 5 primary numbers is a little trickier. The Get-Random cmdlet has a -Count property, but it doesn't work when you need to specify a minimum and maximum range. Here's one way we can get 5 numbers.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\n1..5 | foreach {Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 59}
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
Or you could use a For loop:<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nfor ($i=1;$i -le 5;$i++) {
\n Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 59
\n}
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
But there's no guarantee you won't get a duplicate number. We could try increasing the total numbers and then selecting 5 unique.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\n1..10 | foreach {Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 59} | Select -Unique -first 5 | Sort
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
But even this isn't foolproof. I suppose I could increase the range but theoretically I believe I could still end up with duplicates or actually not enough numbers. Perhaps a Do loop would help.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\n$numArray=@()
\ndo {
\n $i=Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 59
\n if ($numArray -notcontains $i) {
\n $numArray+=$i
\n }
\n} Until ($numArray.Count -eq 5)
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
I'll start out with an empty array. In the Do loop, Get-Random returns a number, $i. I then use the -NotContains operator to see if the number already exists in the array. If it doesn't, ie the evaluation is True, then the number is added to the array using the += operator. This process continues until the total number of elements in $numArray is 5. This should guarantee 5 unique numbers between 1 and 59.<\/p>\n
Now that we can get the numbers, let's bundle the functionality. We might use New-Object and use the $numArray variable we just populated.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nNew-Object PSObject -Property @{
\nNumbers=$numArray | Sort
\nPowerBall=Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 42
\n}
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
I could create a function to wrap everything up but let's mix it up and use a scriptblock which will give us the same pipelined result.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nPS C:\\> $pb={$numArray=@()
\n>> do {
\n>> $i=Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 59
\n>> if ($numArray -notcontains $i) {
\n>> $numArray+=$i
\n>> }
\n>> } Until ($numArray.Count -eq 5)
\n>>
\n>> New-Object PSObject -Property @{
\n>> Numbers=$numArray | Sort
\n>> PowerBall=Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 42
\n>> }
\n>> }
\n>>
\nPS C:\\> &$pb<\/p>\n
PowerBall Numbers
\n --------- -------
\n 10 {7, 26, 28, 40...}
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
Formatting is a bit tricky because the Numbers property is an array. Here's on solution that instructs PowerShell to treat the Numbers property as a string:<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nPS C:\\> &$pb | Select Powerball,@{Name=\"Numbers\";Expression={$_.Numbers -as [string]}} | fl<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 36
\nNumbers : 16 42 46 49 55
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
Not too bad. In fact, I might as well wrap this up as well in a script block.<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nPS C:\\> $play={&$pb | Select Powerball,@{Name=\"Numbers\";Expression={$_.Numbers -as [string]}} | fl}
\nPS C:\\> &$play<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 17
\nNumbers : 1 16 33 34 55
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
I can even pick numbers for 5 games at once:<\/p>\n
[cc lang=\"PowerShell\"]
\nPS C:\\> 1..5 | foreach {&$play}<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 33
\nNumbers : 1 5 14 35 37<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 25
\nNumbers : 16 25 36 44 45<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 15
\nNumbers : 16 27 28 34 45<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 23
\nNumbers : 19 41 42 51 57<\/p>\n
PowerBall : 14
\nNumbers : 4 15 24 47 51
\n[\/cc]<\/p>\n
Formatting is perfect, but I hope you get the idea. I guess I should pipe my numbers to Out-Printer and head to the store and if you win with my PowerShell PowerBall picks, I hope you'll remember me. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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