Powershell split sections by regex - powershell

Question

In order to create a script which allows me to perform a firewall migration, i have the need to understand how to split an output into sections with Powershell.
The firewall (which is a Sonicwall, if it helps) produces an output, which is delimited by sections. For example:
--System Information--
[Data]
--Network Interfaces--
[Data]
--User Objects Table--
[Data]
...
You can see that the output is delimited by these sections, for which i have produced a regex:
$regex1='^--(\w*|\w+ \w+|\w+ \w+ \w+|\w+ \w+ \w+ \w+)--$'
I don't understand however, how can i produce an output which helps me put a specific section title above, and the data directly below. I don't want all of them, just specific outputs from specific sections.
Any help would be much appreciated,
Thanks a lot in advance

Answer 1

A complex multi-line regex might be a bit to much in your case. A very simple approach would be to go through the content line by line:
$content = #"
--System Information--
[Data1]
--Network Interfaces--
[Data2]
[Data3]
--User Objects Table--
[Data4]
"# -split [System.Environment]::NewLine
$dataDict = #{}
foreach ($line in $content)
{
# Each section opens a new entry in the $dataDict hash table.
# Anything else that follows, gets added to this entry.
if($line -match '^--(.+)--$')
{
$section = $Matches[1]
$dataDict[$section] = #()
}
else
{
$dataDict[$section] += $line
}
}
# You can now narrow down the resulting object to the properties,
# that you are interested in.
[pscustomobject]$dataDict |
Select-Object 'System Information', 'Network Interfaces' |
Format-List

Answer 2

I would prefer an approach with a data table:
$configFile = 'C:\sonciwall\sonicwall.txt'
$dt = New-Object system.Data.DataTable
[void]$dt.Columns.Add('Section',[string]::empty.GetType() )
[void]$dt.Columns.Add('Data',[string]::empty.GetType() )
foreach( $line in Get-Content $configFile ) {
$line = $line.Trim()
if( !$line ) {
Continue # skip empty lines
}
elseif( $line -like '--*' ) {
$section = $line
Continue
}
else {
$data = $line
}
$newRow = $dt.NewRow()
$newRow.Section = $section
$newRow.Data = $data
[void]$dt.Rows.Add( $newRow )
}
# Get specific information from a specific section using sql syntax:
$dt.Select("Section = '--System Information--' AND Data = 'foo'")
# Update specific information in all secions:
$rows = $dt.Select("Data = 'foo'")
foreach( $row in $rows ) {
$row.Data = 'foo bar'
[void]$dt.AcceptChanges()
}