{"id":2425,"date":"2012-06-29T08:54:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T12:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2012-06-29T08:54:46","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T12:54:46","slug":"friday-fun-expand-environmental-variables-in-powershell-strings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/2425\/friday-fun-expand-environmental-variables-in-powershell-strings\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Fun: Expand Environmental Variables in PowerShell Strings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This week I was working on a project that involved using the %PATH% environmental variable. The challenge was that I have some entries that look like this: %SystemRoot%\\system32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\. When I try to use that path in PowerShell, it complains because it doesn't expand %SystemRoot%. What I needed was a way to replace it with the actual value, which I can find in the ENV: PSdrive, or reference as $env:systemroot. This seems reasonable enough. Take a string, use a regular expression to find the environmental variable, find the variable in ENV:, do a replacement, write the revised string back to the pipeline. So here I have Resolve-EnvVariable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Function Resolve-EnvVariable {<\/p>\n

[cmdletbinding()]
\nParam(
\n[Parameter(Position=0,ValueFromPipeline=$True,Mandatory=$True,
\nHelpMessage=\"Enter a string that contains an environmental variable like %WINDIR%\")]
\n[ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
\n[string]$String
\n)<\/p>\n

Begin {
\n Write-Verbose \"Starting $($myinvocation.mycommand)\"
\n} #Begin<\/p>\n

Process {
\n #if string contains a % then process it
\n if ($string -match \"%\\S+%\") {
\n Write-Verbose \"Resolving environmental variables in $String\"
\n #split string into an array of values
\n $values=$string.split(\"%\") | Where {$_}
\n foreach ($text in $values) {
\n #find the corresponding value in ENV:
\n Write-Verbose \"Looking for $text\"
\n [string]$replace=(Get-Item env:$text -erroraction \"SilentlyContinue\").Value
\n if ($replace) {
\n #if found append it to the new string
\n Write-Verbose \"Found $replace\"
\n $newstring+=$replace
\n }
\n else {
\n #otherwise append the original text
\n $newstring+=$text
\n }<\/p>\n

} #foreach value<\/p>\n

Write-Verbose \"Writing revised string to the pipeline\"
\n #write the string back to the pipeline
\n Write-Output $NewString
\n } #if
\n else {
\n #skip the string and write it back to the pipeline
\n Write-Output $String
\n }
\n} #Process<\/p>\n

End {
\n Write-Verbose \"Ending $($myinvocation.mycommand)\"
\n} #End
\n} #end Resolve-EnvVariable
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

The function takes a string as a parameter, or you can pipe into the function. The function looks to see if there is something that might be an environmental variable using a regular expression match.<\/p>\n


\nif ($string -match \"%\\S+%\") {
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

If there is an extra % character in the string, this won't work so I'm assuming you have some control over what you provide as input. Now I need to get the match value. At first I tried using the Regex object. But when faced with a string like this \"I am %username% and working on %computername%\" it also tried to turn % and working on% as an environmental variable. I'm sure there's a regex pattern that will work but I found it just as easy to split the string on the % character and trim off the extra space.<\/p>\n


\n$values=$string.split(\"%\") | Where {$_}
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Now, I can go through each value and see if there is a corresponding environmental variable.<\/p>\n


\nforeach ($text in $values) {
\n #find the corresponding value in ENV:
\n Write-Verbose \"Looking for $text\"
\n [string]$replace=(Get-Item env:$text -erroraction \"SilentlyContinue\").Value
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

I turned off the error pipeline to suppress errors about unfound entries. If something was found then I do a simple replace, otherwise, I re-use the original text.<\/p>\n


\nif ($replace) {
\n #if found append it to the new string
\n Write-Verbose \"Found $replace\"
\n $newstring+=$replace
\n}
\nelse {
\n #otherwise append the original text
\n $newstring+=$text
\n}
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

In essence I am building a new string adding the replacement values or original text. When finished I can write the new string, which has the variable replacements back to the pipeline.<\/p>\n


\nWrite-Verbose \"Writing revised string to the pipeline\"
\n#write the string back to the pipeline
\nWrite-Output $NewString
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Finally, I can pass strings that contain environmental variables to the function.<\/p>\n


\nPS C:\\> \"I am %username% and working on %computername%\" | resolve-envvariable
\nI am Jeff and working on SERENITY
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

This isn't perfect. Look what happens if there is an undefined variable:<\/p>\n


\nPS C:\\> \"I am %username% and working on %computername% with a %bogus% variable.\" | resolve-envvariable
\nI am Jeff and working on SERENITY with a bogus variable.
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

But as long as you are confident that variables are defined, then you can do things like this:<\/p>\n


\nPS C:\\> $env:path.split(\";\") | Resolve-EnvVariable | foreach { if (-Not (Test-Path $_)) {$_}}
\nc:\\foo
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Download Resolve-EnvVariable<\/a> and let me know what you think. The download version includes comment based help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I was working on a project that involved using the %PATH% environmental variable. The challenge was that I have some entries that look like this: %SystemRoot%\\system32\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\. When I try to use that path in PowerShell, it complains because it doesn’t expand %SystemRoot%. What I needed was a way to replace it with the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[72,271,4],"tags":[395,568,534,268,394],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commandline","category-friday-fun","category-powershell","tag-env","tag-friday-fun","tag-powershell","tag-regex","tag-scriptiing"],"yoast_head":"\nFriday Fun: Expand Environmental Variables in PowerShell Strings • The Lonely Administrator<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/2425\/friday-fun-expand-environmental-variables-in-powershell-strings\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friday Fun: Expand Environmental Variables in PowerShell Strings • The Lonely Administrator\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This week I was working on a project that involved using the %PATH% environmental variable. 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These are handy for commands you want to run again, but don't necessarily need to turn into permanent functions. $freec={(get-wmiobject win32_logicaldisk -filter \"deviceid='c:'\" -property Freespace).FreeSpace\/1mb} Now in PowerShell I can invoke the scriptblock. PS S:\\> &$freec\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Friday Fun"","block_context":{"text":"Friday Fun","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/category\/friday-fun\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/get-variabletype-1-300x197.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1660,"url":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/1660\/friday-fun-what-a-char\/","url_meta":{"origin":2425,"position":3},"title":"Friday Fun What a CHAR!","author":"Jeffery Hicks","date":"September 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I posted a PowerShell snippet on Twitter. My original post piped an array of integers as [CHAR] type using an OFS. Don't worry about that. As many people reminded me, it is much easier to use the -Join operator. -join [char[]](116,103,105,102) I'll let you try that on your\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Friday Fun"","block_context":{"text":"Friday Fun","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/category\/friday-fun\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1389,"url":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/1389\/friday-fun-randomness-abounds\/","url_meta":{"origin":2425,"position":4},"title":"Friday Fun Randomness Abounds","author":"Jeffery Hicks","date":"April 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I find it a little ironic that although I like efficiency, structure and order I'm fascinated with randomness. In today's Friday Fun I want to explore a few ways you might incorporate randomness into your PowerShell scripting. Perhaps you need a random number between 100 and 500. Or a string\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Friday Fun"","block_context":{"text":"Friday Fun","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/category\/friday-fun\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2330,"url":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/scripting\/2330\/friday-fun-get-latest-powershell-scripts\/","url_meta":{"origin":2425,"position":5},"title":"Friday Fun: Get Latest PowerShell Scripts","author":"Jeffery Hicks","date":"May 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Probably like many of you I keep almost all of my scripts in a single location. I'm also usually working on multiple items at the same time. 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