Powershell script assign food to numbers and list them - powershell

Question

The script should allocate and list the numbers of the particular foods.
So i want a Script that makes a "Plan" of the Food i'm gonna eat this week.
i have a counter that can "choose from 200 meals".
So what i need is that it is like this:
number* = Tacos
number* = Pizza
...continuing like this
I don't have a clue how to do this... i hope you can help me!
here is my code untill now.
# Food selector for the week!
#random Stuff mixed for every day.
function Random-Food{
Param(
[array]$InputList
)
return $InputList | Get-Random -Count 7
$InputList.Count;
}
$a = 1..200
Write-Output (Random-Food -InputList $a)

Answer 1

In a separate file, create an enumeration (for readability):
Enum Food
{
Tacos
Pizza
...
}
In your script, dot-source this file so you have it available: . 'C:\myenum.ps1'
Then in your function:
function Get-Food {
[Enum]::GetValues([Food]) | Get-Random -Count 7
}
This will return 7 random foods from your list. As an added bonus, you can assign a number to each food and get that reference as well. (Tacos = 5 and access it like [Food]::Tacos which can be treated as a string or integer)
To include the day:
function Get-Food {
$foodsOfWeek = [Enum]::GetValues([Food]) | Get-Random -Count 7
foreach ($day in [Enum]::GetValues([DayOfWeek])) {
([string]$day).Substring(0, 3) + ': ' + $foodsOfWeek[$day]
}
}
An explanation:
The function will grab all the values (Tacos, Pizza, etc.) from your custom [Food] enumeration and then randomly select 7 of those to put into an array that we store into $foodsOfWeek.
At that point, we need to loop through the days of the week (system built-in enumeration [DayOfWeek]). We type-cast to a string so we can call the .Substring() method to grab the first 3 characters and append a : for formatting.
Finally, we access the $foodOfWeek array using the [DayOfWeek] enumeration since days correlate to the numbers 0-6 (the size of our array).
(DayOfWeek.Sunday == 0) && (DayOfWeek.Sunday == "Sunday")) == true

Answer 2

To learn PowerShell, try this: Windows PowerShell 3.0 Step by Step - Pearsoncmg.com
Freebie follows. Written and tested on A Win 7 machine with PowerShell 4. I included a few foods. All you have to do is add items to the $foodList.
Sample output follows the code
cls
#define an array of strings and load it with food words
$foodList = #("Apples","Bananas", "Cherries","Grapes","Mangoes","Melons","Oranges","Peaches","Pears","Pineapples","Strawberries","Tomatoes")
#define an array of days
$dow = #("Mon","Tue","Wed","Thu","Fri","Sat","Sun")
#loop 7 times, once per day and generate a random number between 0 and the number of food items - 1
for ($i = 0; $i -lt 7; $i++)
{
$foodItemIndex = Get-Random -Minimum 0 -Maximum ($foodList.Count - 1)
write-host ($dow[$i] + ": " + $foodList[$foodItemIndex])
}

Answer 3

Here's one way to do it:
$foodChoices = "Pizza","Taco","Dim Sum","Burger","Salad","Soup","Sandwich","Curry"
$foodChoices[(Get-Random -InputObject (0..($foodChoices.Count - 1)) -Count 7)] |
ForEach-Object {$daysOfWeek = [enum]::GetNames([DayOfWeek]); $day=0}{
[PsCustomObject]#{
Day=$daysOfWeek[$day++]
Food=$_
}
}
Output will look something like this:
Day Food
--- ----
Sunday Burger
Monday Sandwich
Tuesday Salad
Wednesday Taco
Thursday Soup
Friday Dim Sum
Saturday Curry
Just add more items to $foodChoices and you're good to go ...