Formatting variable to Date

PowerShell Help
1

I have a log file that I am parsing for last successful run date. I was able to parse that out of the log file…with this command

Get-Content -Path 'C:***********.messages' -Tail 75 | Select-String -Pattern 'Finished: 1 of 1' | FL | Out-String

The output of the above is what I want but the log file has the date all weird in the format
Mon Aug 1 20:30:50 2022

I am trying to figure out how to take the above output and format it like below
Mon Aug 1 2022 20:30:50

I have been trying to search google for everything i can think might work and none of it seems to get me where I want to be…So I am here hoping someone has for more knowledge than me on this.

2

If the format is always the same the easiest way would be to split the string on the spaces and re-assemble it in the desired order like this:

('Mon Aug 1 20:30:50 2022' -split ' ')[0,1,2,4,3] -join ' '

The Output would be …

Mon Aug 1 2022 20:30:50

The other option would be to parse the string to a [DateTime] type. Then you can format to any of the available options for this type. Depending on your actual language setting you may adjust the language code in this snippet.

[datetime]::ParseExact('Mon Aug 1 20:30:50 2022','ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy',[Globalization.CultureInfo]::CreateSpecificCulture('en-us'))

BTW: When you post code, sample data, console output or error messages please format it as code using the preformatted text button ( </> ). Simply place your cursor on an empty line, click the button and paste your code.

Thanks in advance

How to format code in PowerShell.org <---- Click :point_up_2:t4: :wink:

3

Thank you for the response, sorry about the incorrect format…Last time I was here it was backticks. The button will make things a lot easier.
You are a genius the first option works perfectly. Now the format is closer to the rest of the data collected and i can improve a few other options I have created in the past. Thank you for educating me.

4

I’m glad it worked. :+1:t4: :slightly_smiling_face:

It still is - but that’s more for single cmdlets names or parameters inside the plain text. If you have a code snippet it looks better with the button. :wink:

5

sometimes I really hate that everyone formats logs their own way…
I have run into small issue. Some of the dates are not formatting correctly. I found out that there is a difference in log format based on the day. Not all days are double digit. So when the day is 1-9 the format below doesnt work because of the extra space. I tried to split each character to its own line…and the join them so that i can always get the same date format…it works but it looks like a jumbled mess.

$log = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $ComputerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Content -Path 'C:**************.messages' -Tail 75 | Select-String -Pattern 'Finished: 1 of 1 hosts' | FL | Out-String}
$date = $log.Split("[]") | Select-Object -First 2 | Select-Object -Last 1
($date -split ' ')[0,1,2,4,3] -join ' '

$log = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $ComputerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Content -Path 'C:**************.messages' -Tail 75 | Select-String -Pattern 'Finished: 1 of 1 hosts' | FL | Out-String}
$date = $log.Split("[]") | Select-Object -First 2 | Select-Object -Last 1
($date -split '')[1,2,3,5,6,7,9,10,21,22,23,24,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19] -join ''

Output for $log looks like this:

[LINE:][Wed Aug  3 22:39:57 2022][4720.0][scan=][duration=] : Finished: 1 of 1 hosts

Any thoughts on how i can clean it up and make it look better?

6

You can use regex patterns for your -split operator. So

($date -split "\s+")[0,1,2,4,3] -join ' '

should do the trick. :wink:

Another option would be to replace double spaces with single spaces beforehand.

$date -replace '  ', ' '

… or … .even better … to replace all occurences of more than one space with single space:

$date -replace "\s+", ' '
1 Like