Powershell issue putting process name into hashtable if it's not found - powershell

Question

I'm trying to run on a list of processes and if found put the process name in hashtable with value True and if not False, the True part works just fine I got an issue if the process is not found it won't pair the searched process name with Flase just be blank
CODE
$processStatus = $null
$processStatus = #{}
$processName = "firefox", "discord", "fgdfg"
[System.Diagnostics.Process[]]$processList = Get-Process $processName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Sort-Object -Property name -Unique
ForEach ($process in $processList) {
if($process -ne $null) {
$processStatus.Add($process.ProcessName,"True")
} else {
$processStatus.Add($process,"Flase")
}
}
Result
Name Value
---- -----
Discord True
firefox True
Expected result
Name Value
---- -----
Discord True
firefox True
fgdfg False

Answer 1

Your quite close. You just need loop through the process names and run Get-Process against each process name. Then check if the process exists before setting the status in the hash table.
$processNames = "firefox", "discord", "fgdfg"
$processStatus = #{}
foreach ($processname in $processNames) {
$processes = Get-Process -Name $processName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if ($null -ne $processes) {
$processStatus[$processName] = $true
}
else {
$processStatus[$processName] = $false
}
}
Also make sure to put $null on the left side of the operator when doing comparisons. If your using VSCode, PSScriptAnalyzer will give a PSPossibleIncorrectComparisonWithNull warning if you don't do this. Have a look at the documentation for more information as to why this is recommended.
We could also use the .NET method System.Diagnostics.Process.GetProcessByName to get the processes that share the same name. This method returns System.Diagnostics.Process[], so we can simply check if the count is greater than 0.
$processNames = "firefox", "discord", "fgdfg", "notepad"
$processStatus = #{}
foreach ($processname in $processNames) {
$processes = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::GetProcessesByName($processName)
if ($processes.Count -gt 0) {
$processStatus[$processName] = $true
}
else {
$processStatus[$processName] = $false
}
}

Answer 2

Execute Get-Process against each individual process name instead:
$processStatus = #{}
$processName = "firefox", "discord", "fgdfg"
$processName |ForEach-Object {
$processStatus[$_] = #(Get-Process -Name $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).Count -gt 0
}
If you want a list of status objects instead, you could also use Select-Object:
$processNames |Select-Object #{Name='Name';Expression={$_}},#{Name='Status';Expression={#(Get-Process -Name $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).Count -gt 0}}