In the previous tip we split a chunk of multi-line text into individual lines and removed any empty lines.
However, when a line isn’t really empty but contains whitespace (spaces or tabulators), it is still returned:
# $data is a single string and contains blank lines $data = @' Server1 Server2 Cluster4 '@ $data = $data.Trim() # split in single lines and remove empty lines $regex = '[\r\n]{1,}' $array = $data -split $regex $array.Count $c = 0 Foreach ($_ in $array) { '{0:d2} {1}' -f $c, $_ $c++ }
Here, we have added a few spaces to the line right above “Server2” (which you obviously can’t see in the listing). This is the result:
00 Server1 01 02 Server2 03 Cluster4
Since we are splitting at any number of CR and LF characters, a space would break that pattern.
Rather than turning the regular expression in an even more complex beast, for such things you may want to append a simple Where-Object to do the fine polishing:
# $data is a single string and contains blank lines $data = @' Server1 Server2 Cluster4 '@ $data = $data.Trim() # split in single lines and remove empty lines $regex = '[\r\n]{1,}' $array = $data -split $regex | Where-Object { [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($_) -eq $false } $array.Count $c = 0 Foreach ($_ in $array) { '{0:d2} {1}' -f $c, $_ $c++ }
[string]::IsNullOrEmpty() identifies the situation we are after, so lines that qualify are removed by Where-Object. The result is what is needed:
00 Server1 01 Server2 02 Cluster4
