At a loss with Get-ChildItem behavior

PowerShell Help
1

Hi,

I’ve been at this for a really long time and I’m at my wits end. My script is below. I’m trying to figure out why I’m not getting any objects returned from line 66 when I specify multiple filters in the -include parameter. The script works as expected if I only provide one item in the include filter. If I run the get-childitem cmdlet via my output from line 64 I get the expected number of objects back. Can someone please let me know why the behavior differs when I use the cmdlet in my script versus run get-childitem cmdlet outside my script?

Function Copy-WebLogs
{
param (
[validateSet(“wsvcctt”,“unittest”)]
[string]$servertype,
[string]$logName,
[validateSet(“Tomcat”,“IIS”,“AppLogs”,“all”)]
[string]$logType,
[string]$target
)

 Begin 
{
    $UNIT_TEST = @{servers="BGTMNWL-G4BZZL1.PEROOT.com";
                        LogTypes="Tomcat";
                        Tomcat="c$\testScripts";
                        }
    switch ($servertype)
    {
        'wsvcctt' {
            $hash = $WEB_SERVICE_CTT
        }

        'unittest' {
            $hash = $UNIT_TEST
        }

    }
}

Process {
    $webs= $hash.servers

    switch ($logType) {
        'Tomcat' {
            $logDirectory = $hash.Tomcat
        }

        'IIS' {
            $logDirectory = $hash.IIS
        }

         'AppLogs' {
            $logDirectory = $hash.AppLogs
           }
    }

    <#Check to see if the $target path exists, if not create it. #>
    If (!(test-path -Path $target)) {
        New-Item -Path $target -ItemType Directory
    }

    foreach($web in $webs) 
    {

        If (!(test-path -Path $target\$web)) 
        {
            New-Item -Path $target\$web -ItemType Directory -ErrorAction Stop
        }

    #below is line 68
    "Get-ChildItem -path \\$web\$logDirectory\* -Include $logName"
    #Below is line 70
   Get-ChildItem -path \\$web\$logDirectory\* -Include $logName | ForEach-Object {"Found stuff"}
    }
}

}

2

What’s in your $logName variable when it works, an when it does not?

I suspect that the problem is that you’ve declared the $logName parameter as a [string], not [string]. When you want to pass multiple multiple values to the -Include parameter of Get-ChildItem, you do so by passing it an array of strings. Even if you’re passing an array to your Copy-WebLogs function, PowerShell is converting that into a single String object because of how you declared $logName in your param block (which typically means you’ll have a space-separate list, as seen here:)

$variable = [string]('One','Two','Three','Four','Five')
$variable.GetType().FullName

$variable

<#
Output:

System.String
One Two Three Four Five
#>
3

Thanks Dave I really appreciate it. The problem was with my declaration of $logName - as you suspected.