Shorten Where-Object

PowerShell Help
1

Hi,

I am relatively new to PowerShell and couldn’t figure out how to shorten this command in “splat-style” shortening so it would read better, is there a way?

gwmi win32_service -ComputerName $servers -filter “StartMode = ‘Auto’ and State ‘Running’” | where-object{($.DisplayName -ne “Software Protection”) -and ($.DisplayName -ne “Shell Hardware Detection”) -and ($.DisplayName -ne “Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_x86”) -and ($.DisplayName -ne “Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_x64”)} | ft SystemName, DisplayName

I tried to assign everything inside the {} to a variable and then run it like that but that didn’t work too well.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
AC

2

Well, you could build an array of strings and use the -notcontains operator:

$exclude = "Software Protection", "Shell Hardware Detection", "Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_x86", "Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_x64"

gwmi win32_service -ComputerName $servers -filter "StartMode = 'Auto' and State != 'Running'" |
Where-Object { $exclude -notcontains $_.DisplayName }
ft SystemName, DisplayName

However, it’s generally better to put all of this logic right into your -Filter string, for performance reasons. In that case, you can’t use the array directly, but you can build up a filter string dynamically from the array. For example:

$exclude = "Software Protection", "Shell Hardware Detection", "Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_x86", "Microsoft .NET Framework NGEN v4.0.30319_x64"

$excludeAsString = @($exclude | ForEach-Object { "DisplayName != ""$_""" }) -join ' AND ' 

gwmi win32_service -ComputerName $servers -filter "StartMode = 'Auto' and State != 'Running' AND $excludeAsString" |
ft SystemName, DisplayName
3

Thank you Dave, that works perfectly!