I am trying to create a username based on first and last name. I want just the first initial of the username. When I try the code below I get this error
Import-Csv "C:\Users\Alex.piwowar.adm.j2global\desktop\ExcelMicroADAdd.csv" | ForEach-Object{
$First=$_."First"
$Last=$_."Last"
$Location=$_."Location"
$Title=$_."Title"
$Department=$_."Department"
$ManagerName=$_."Manager"
$Company=$_."Company"
$FirstIntitial = $First.Substring(0,1)
}
From my understanding what I entered will start at the beginning of $First and move over one which should be the first letter.
Am I thinking incorrectly?
You assertion of how your code is supposed to work is correct. My assumption here is that $first is a zero-length string. I can get this error from doing the following:
"".Substring(0,1)
The error is stating that the string is not long enough to return one characters. Zero-length would explain that.
Have a look at your source data possibly or debug $first/$_.First at the time of failure. Also you don't need to use quotes on single word properties. Just ones with special characters or spaces.
Once you get that issue figured out....If you only wanted the first character though you can treat string like a character array to just return the first character. I do so when making my new account scripts
$FirstIntitial = $First[0]
Related
I am trying to write a Powershell code to identify a string with a specific character from a filename from multiple files.
An example of a filename
20190902091031_202401192_50760_54206_6401.pdf
$Variable = $Filename.Substring(15,9)
Results:
202401192 (this is what I am after)
However in some instances the filename will be like below
20190902091031_20240119_50760_54206_6401.pdf
$Variable = $Filename.Substring(15,9)
Results:
20240119_ (this is NOT what I am after)
I am trying to find a code to identify the 9th character,
IF the 9th character = "_"
THEN Set
$Variable = $Filename.Substring(15,8)
Results:
20240119
All credit to TheMadTechnician who beat me to the punch with this answer.
To expand on the technique a bit, use the split method or operator to split a string every time a certain character shows up. Your data is separated by the underscore character, so is a perfect example of using this technique. By using either of the following:
$FileName.Split('_')
$FileName -split '_'
You can turn your long string into an array of shorter strings, each containing one of the parts of your original string. Since you want the 2nd one, you use the array descriptor [1] (0 is 1st) and you're done.
Good luck
I have a problem that I really hope to get some help with.
It's rather complex but I will try and keep my explanation as simple and objective as possible. In a nutshell, I have log files that contain thousands of lines. Each line consists of information like date/time, source, type and message.
In this case the message contains a variable size ...999 password that I need to mask. Basically the message looks something like this (its an ISO message):
year-day-month 00:00:00,computername,source, info,rx 0210 22222222222222333333333333333333444444444444444444444444455555008PASSWORD6666666666666666677777777777777777777777ccccdddddddddddffffffffffffff
For each line I need to zero in on password length identifier (008) do a count on it and then proceed to mask the number of following characters, which would be PASSWORD in this case. I would change it to something like XXXXXXXX instead so once done the line would look like this:
year-day-month 00:00:00,computername,source, info,rx 0210 22222222222222333333333333333333444444444444444444444444455555008XXXXXXXX6666666666666666677777777777777777777777ccccdddddddddddffffffffffffff
I honestly have no idea how to start doing this with PowerShell. I need to loop though each line in the log file, and identify the number of characters to mask.
I've kept this high level as a starting point, there are some other complexities that I hope to figure out at a later time, like the fact that there are different types of messages and depending on the type the password length starts at another character position. I might be able to build on my aforementioned question first but if anyone understands what I mean then I would appreciate some help or tips about that too.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!
Additional information to original post:
Firstly, thank you to everyone for your answers thus far, its been greatly appreciated. Now that I have a baseline for how your answers are being formulated based on my information I feel I need to provide some more details.
1) There was a question about whether or not the password starting position is fixed and the logic behind it.
The password position is not fixed. In an ISO message (which these are) the password, and all information in the message, is dependent on the data elements present in the message which are in turn are indicated by the bitmap. The bitmap is also part of the message. So in my case, I need to script additional logic above and beyond the answers provided to come full circle.
2) This is what I know and these are the steps I hope to accomplish with the script.
What I know:
- There are 3 different msg types that contain passwords. I've figured out where the starting position of the password is for each msg type based on the bitmap and the data elements present.
For example 0210 contains one in this case:
year-day-month 00:00:00,computername,source, info,rx 0210 22222222222222333333333333333333444444444444444444444444455555008PASSWORD6666666666666666677777777777777777777777ccccdddddddddddffffffffffffff
What I need to do:
Pass the log file to the script
For each line in the log identify if the line has a msg type that contains a password
If the message type contains a password then determine length of password by reading the preceding 3 digits to the password ("ans ...999" which means alphanumeric - special with length max of 999 and 3 digit length info). Lets say the character position of the password would be 107 in this case for arguments sake, so we know to read the 3 numbers before it.
Starting at the character position of the password, mask the number of characters required with XXX. Loop through log until complete.
It does seem as though you're indicating the position of the password and the length of the password will vary. As long as you have the '008' and something like '666' to indicate a starting and stopping point something like this should work.
$filePath = '.\YourFile.log'
(Get-Content $filePath) | ForEach-Object {
$startIndex = $_.IndexOf('008') + 3
$endIndex = $_.IndexOf('666', $startIndex)
$passwordLength = $endIndex - $startIndex
$passwordToReplace = $_.Substring($startIndex,$passwordLength)
$obfuscation = New-Object 'string' -ArgumentList 'X', $passwordLength
$_.Replace($passwordToReplace, $obfuscation)
} | Set-Content $filePath
If the file is too large to load into memory then you will have to StreamReader and StreamWriter to write the content to a new file and delete the old.
Assuming a fixed position where the password-length field starts, based on your sample line (if that position is variable, as you've hinted at, you need to tell us more):
$line = '22222222222222333333333333333333444444444444444444444444455555008PASSWORD6666666666666666677777777777777777777777ccccdddddddddddffffffffffffff'
$posStart = 62 # fixed 0-based pos. where length-of-password field stats
$pwLenFieldLen = 3 # length of length-of-password field
$pwLen = [int] $line.SubString($posStart, $pwLenFieldLen) # extract password length
$pwSubstitute = 'X' * $pwLen # determine the password replacement string
# replace the password with all Xs
$line -replace "(?<=^.{$($posStart + $pwLenFieldLen)}).{$pwLen}(?=.*)", $pwSubstitute
Note: This is not the most efficient way to do it, but it is concise.
Problem
I am working on a script that has a user provide a specific IP address and I want to mask this IP in some fashion so that it isn't stored in the logs. My problem is, that I can easily do this when I know what the first three values of the IP typically are; however, I want to avoid storing/hard coding those values into the code to if at all possible. I also want to be able to replace the values even if the first three are unknown to me.
Examples:
10.11.12.50 would display as XX.XX.XX.50
10.12.11.23 would also display as XX.XX.XX.23
I have looked up partial string replacements, but none of the questions or problems that I found came close to doing this. I have tried doing things like:
# This ended up replacing all of the numbers
$tempString = $str -replace '[0-9]', 'X'
I know that I am partway there, but I aiming to only replace only the first 3 sets of digits so, basically every digit that is before a '.', but I haven't been able to achieve this.
Question
Is what I'm trying to do possible to achieve with PowerShell? Is there a best practice way of achieving this?
Here's an example of how you can accomplish this:
Get-Content 'File.txt' |
ForEach-Object { $_ = $_ -replace '\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}','xx.xx.xx' }
This example matches a digit 1-3 times, a literal period, and continues that pattern so it'll capture anything from 0-999.0-999.0-999 and replace with xx.xx.xx
TheIncorrigible1's helpful answer is an exact way of solving the problem (replacement only happens if 3 consecutive .-separated groups of 1-3 digits are matched.)
A looser, but shorter solution that replaces everything but the last .-prefixed digit group:
PS> '10.11.12.50' -replace '.+(?=\.\d+$)', 'XX.XX.XX'
XX.XX.XX.50
(?=\.\d+$) is a (positive) lookahead assertion ((?=...)) that matches the enclosed subexpression (a literal . followed by 1 or more digits (\d) at the end of the string ($)), but doesn't capture it as part of the overall match.
The net effect is that only what .+ captured - everything before the lookahead assertion's match - is replaced with 'XX.XX.XX'.
Applied to the above example input string, 10.11.12.50:
(?=\.\d+$) matches the .-prefixed digit group at the end, .50.
.+ matches everything before .50, which is 10.11.12.
Since the (?=...) part isn't captured, it is therefore not included in what is replaced, so it is only substring 10.11.12 that is replaced, namely with XX.XX.XX, yielding XX.XX.XX.50 as a result.
i am facing issue while converting unicode data into national characters.
When i convert the Unicode data into national using national-of function, some junk character like # is appended after the string.
E.g
Ws-unicode pic X(200)
Ws-national pic N(600)
--let the value in Ws-Unicode is これらの変更は. getting from java end.
move function national-of ( Ws-unicode ,1208 ) to Ws-national.
--after converting value is like これらの変更は #.
i do not want the extra # character added after conversion.
please help me to find out the possible solution, i have tried to replace N'#' with space using inspect clause.
it worked well but failed in some specific scenario like if we have # in input from user end. in that case genuine # also converted to space.
Below is a snippet of code I used to convert EBCDIC to UTF. Before I was capturing string lengths, I was also getting # symbols:
STRING
FUNCTION DISPLAY-OF (
FUNCTION NATIONAL-OF (
WS-EBCDIC-STRING(1:WS-XML-EBCDIC-LENGTH)
WS-EBCDIC-CCSID
)
WS-UTF8-CCSID
)
DELIMITED BY SIZE
INTO WS-UTF8-STRING
WITH POINTER WS-XML-UTF8-LENGTH
END-STRING
SUBTRACT 1 FROM WS-XML-UTF8-LENGTH
What this code does is string the UTF8 representation of the EBCIDIC string into another variable. The WITH POINTER clause will capture the new length of the string + 1 (+ 1 because the pointer is positioned to the next position after the string ended).
Using this method, you should be able to know exactly how long second string is and use that string with the exact length.
That should remove the unwanted #s.
EDIT:
One thing I forgot to mention, in my case, the # signs were actually EBCDIC low values when viewing the actual hex on the mainframe
Use inspect with reverse and stop after first occurence of #
I came across the following line of syntax which is rather advanced (to me):
(Get-ADReplicationSubnet -Filter *) -notmatch [String]::Join('|',$c.Subnet)
The above does exactly what I want, retrieve the list of subnets that are not matched against the $c.Subnet variable. I tried recreating the same effect with the line below. This does not work.
Get-ADReplicationSubnet -Filter * | Where {$_.Name -notmatch $c.Subnet}
My question is; Can someone explain in simple English how the first line works? (Not sure on the [String]::Join('|',$c.Subnet) part. It is difficult to search for something you don't know the name of. Besides that, why does my version not work?
I should clarify that $c.Subnet is an array of values.
[String]::Join('|',$c.Subnet) is call to the .NET framework -- the Join() method of the String class. You can take a look at the documentation here.
The documentation leads to the following explanation of the return value: A string that consists of the elements in value delimited by the separator string. If value is an empty array, the method returns String.Empty.
This means your return string will be something like value1|value2|value3 (where each value is value from $c.Subnet), which -notmatch interprets as a regex, with | meaning or. What the first line does is return values that do not match value1 or value2 or value3.
Why (I think) your line doesn't work is because you're using -notmatch with an array rather than a string. This article has some usage info about the two.
[String]::Join('|',$c.Subnet)
The [String] part means the .NET class.
The ::Join part means make a call to a static method of the String class, i.e. you don't have to "new up" an object before you use it.
The Join method takes and array and turns it into a string delineated by the pipe (in this case)
Someone else will have an explanation for the rest.