Concatenate Arrays as String with PowerShell - powershell

Question

i have two array ($a , $b) which holds the following strings:
$a
MSSQL11.SQLINST15
MSSQL12.SQLINST16
MSSQL12.SQLINST17
$b
2874
2884
2885
That i'm trying to concatenate to a new array ($c), as a strings with a comma sign in the middle:
$c
MSSQL11.SQLINST15,2874
MSSQL12.SQLINST16,2884
MSSQL12.SQLINST17,2885
Problem is, that using my current ps code:
$c = #($a + ',' + $b)
[string]::Concat($c)
$c
I'm getting a very strange output:
MSSQL11.SQLINST15
MSSQL12.SQLINST16
MSSQL12.SQLINST17
,
2887
2884
2885

Answer 1

At the end, i've use a powershell hashtable.

Answer 2

I like this way of doing it. Create a zip function to combine your two arrays into a single array of tuples.
Then it's just a matter of piping piece-wise over that tuple list our zip function gives us. Super convenient and reusable.
function Zip($a, $b) {
while ($a) {
$x, $a = $a
$y, $b = $b
[tuple]::Create($x, $y)
}
}
$c = zip $a $b |% {$_.item1 + [string]$_.item2}
Note you can choose where ya wanna to your [string] conversion (in the following, the last line of zip).
function Zip($a, $b) {
while ($a) {
$x, $a = $a
$y, $b = $b
[tuple]::Create([string]$x, $y)
}
}
$c = zip $a $b |% {$_.item1 + $_.item2}
Extra info: Looks like you're accidentally just combining the two arrays using a ",". But $a and $b are arrays, so what you actually want to do is combine the first element of $a with the first element of $b (aka $a[0] + [string]$b[0], and so on for each element. Why the [0]? Remember we almost always start counting at 0 in programming. So the second item of an array is actually [1].
Edit: Here is an example using a foreach loop.
```
foreach($item in $a) {
$i = $a.IndexOf($item)
$a[$i] + [string]$b[$i]
}
```
If for some reason $a has 10 things in it, and $b only has 2 things, it's gonna give you funny behavior. So be careful there. Please let me know if I can better clarify anything. Don't forget to experiment.