Unexpected token '$regex' in expression or statement

[wei-yen-tan]

Hi guys,

I have been trying to debug this issue with my code.

What I am trying to do is listed in the comment based help but on this line:

$a | Select -ExpandProperty samaccountname | Get-Aduser |
where {“$_.$ADProperty” -$Operator “$regex”

it says this “Unexpected token ‘$regex’ in expression or statement” in Powershell. I am not quite sure why it is doing this as if I am writing it out in the console:

$a = get-adgroupmember -identity $ADGroup $a | Select -ExpandProperty samaccountname | Get-Aduser | where {$_.givenname -match "^[A-Z]"}

it does work.

The full copy of my script is below. Any help most appreciated.

WY

function Extract-ADGroupmember
{
[CmdletBinding()]
param
(
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true,
ValueFromPipeline = $true,
ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = $true,
Position = 1)]
$ADGroup,
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true,
Position = 2)]
[ValidateSet(“givenname”, “surname”)]
$ADProperty,
[Parameter(
Position = 3)]
$Operator = “match”,
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true,
Position = 4)]
$regex
)
Import-Module ActiveDirectory
$a = get-adgroupmember -identity $ADGroup

$a | Select -ExpandProperty samaccountname | Get-Aduser |
	 where {"$_.$ADProperty" -$Operator '$regex'
}

}

[wei-yen-tan]

sorry,

I have posted twice inadvertently. OP below:

[system]

The problem is that you’re trying to use -$Operator instead of just -match. You can’t substitute operators with variables that way. (You’ve also got double-quotes around $_.$ADProperty and single quotes around $regex, neither of which are likely to work the way you want them to.)

If you’re using PowerShell v3 or later, you can take advantage of Where-Object’s new parameter sets and splatting to accomplish something very similar, though:

$splatOperator = @{ $Operator = $true }

$stuff | Where-Object $ADProperty @splatOperator $regex

If you’re stuck supporting PowerShell v2, then you’ll have to do a bit more work. I think what I might do in that case is create a script block according to the operator that was passed in. Something like this:

$scriptBlock = switch ($operator) {
    'match' {
        { $args[0] -match $args[1] }
    }

    'like' {
        { $args[0] -like $args[1] }
    }

    # etc
}

$stuff | Where-Object { & $scriptBlock $_.$ADProperty $regex }

[wei-yen-tan]

Hi Dave,

Thank you very much for the reply. We have a Win2012 R2 management box at the place where we are at…so the first option is on the table with Where-Object parameter sets. I tried to add what you have with the splatting but I got no results when I should have got some results.

When I ran it through the debugger, the operator splat value didn’t contain any values. Is there something that I am missing such as defining

thank you Dave for your reply.

[system]

I assigned a value to that hashtable as the first line in my example:

$splatOperator = @{ $Operator = $true }

[wei-yen-tan]

Ahh ok I get it.

I understand what you are trying to do, but when I evaluate $splatoperator, Powershell returns the value of the splat as a system.collections.hashtable.

[system]

That’s what it is supposed to be. You splat the hashtable to Where-Object.

[wei-yen-tan]

Ok…but ithen when powershell is interpreting the hash, shouldnt it show the $operator value?

For some reason I don’t think its getting the operator correctly as I am getting the error:

ERROR: Where-Object : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument ‘^[1]’.
Extract-ADGroupmember.ps1 (55, 4): ERROR: At Line: 55 char: 4

I have the relevant part of the code :

$a = get-adgroupmember -identity $ADGroup
$splatOperator = @{ $Operator = $True}
$a | Select -ExpandProperty samaccountname | Get-Aduser |
where $ADProperty -@splatOperator $regex

`

The only thing that I could see messing it up is the -before the splat.

Have I done this right? The reason why I put in the “-” is to mimic the command in the console:

$a = get-adgroupmember -identity Contoso_admin
$a | Select -ExpandProperty samaccountname | Get-Aduser | where givenname -match “^[2]”

The other possibility is actually doing a full blown parameter set.

---

1. A-D ↩︎

2. A-H ↩︎

[system]

That extra hyphen is your problem. You just want it to be this:

where $ADProperty @splatOperator $regex

Read the about_Splatting help file for all the details on how that technique works.

[wei-yen-tan]

Ahhh thanks Dave,

That worked and using the syntax below works and gives the result that I want.
What was confusing me was seeing the splat with a value of $true. I learn something new everyday!

Extract-ADGroupmember -ADGroup Contoso_admin -ADProperty givenname -Operator ‘-match’ -regex “^[1]”

Final code:

function Extract-ADGroupmember { [CmdletBinding()] param ( [Parameter(Mandatory = $true, ValueFromPipeline = $true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName = $true, Position = 1)] $ADGroup, [Parameter(Mandatory = $true, Position = 2)] [ValidateSet("givenname", "surname")] $ADProperty, [Parameter( Position = 3)] $Operator = "match", [Parameter(Mandatory = $true, Position = 4)] $regex ) Import-Module ActiveDirectory $a = get-adgroupmember -identity $ADGroup $splatOperator = @{ $Operator = $True} $a | Select -ExpandProperty samaccountname | Get-Aduser | where $ADProperty @splatOperator $regex

}

---

1. A-Z ↩︎

[wei-yen-tan]

BTW, how are you doing the block of code in your post?

[system]

You’re going to run into some trouble without input validation on that operator parameter. Passing in ‘-match’ won’t work, but ‘match’ should.

[system]

HTML PRE tags. < PRE > (code) < /PRE > , but without the spaces in the tags.

[wei-yen-tan]

but match won’t make it a operator in the orginal code? It seems to be working if i have the parameter like this.

		[Parameter(
				   Position = 3)]
		$Operator = '-match'

[system]

You’re getting hung up on the hyphen. That’s the syntax for operators (and parameters), but when you’re using splatting, you don’t need the hyphen. Maybe PowerShell’s smart enough to ignore it; dunno, never tried, because that’s not how the documentation says it’s supposed to work.

[wei-yen-tan]

Ahhh ok. My apologies Dave, you are right. I checked again without the - and it gave me the desired result. Using the hypen didn’t give me the results properly.

Thanks for correcting my assumptions. Reading through the help about_splatting it wasnt apparent to me of what you said.

In either case this whole exercise is very fruitful.