Powershell Prompt for input - powershell

Question

I have a few lines of powershell code that looks in a remote directory
Get-ChildItem "\\box_lab001\f$\output files" -force |
Where-Object {!$_.PsIsContainer -AND $_.lastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-5) } |
Select-Object LastWriteTime,#{n="Path";e={convert-path $_.PSPath}} |
Tee-Object "\\\box_lab001\c$\Users\john\Documents\output files_root.txt" |
Remove-Item -force
What I'm looking to do is make this scalable across multiple boxes where if a user sees an issue on box_lab01, trough 10. Then he can run the script with a switch that will ask for input. It would then run the command separately, replacing box_lab### each time, possible?
C:\powershell.ps1 -input
what boxes are having the issue? use three digit numbers only, comma separated

Answer 1

Yes.
You can use Read-Host to prompt for input. You can use param(...) to add parameters to a script:
param($input = $null)
if ($input) {
$foo = Read-Host -Prompt $input
}
You can then get the individual numbers by using -split:
$numbers = $foo -split ','
Loop over them:
$numbers | ForEach-Object {
...
}
You can use $_ within the block to refer to the current number.

Answer 2

You want to add a parameter that takes an array of values as input. You can then use these to check each machine:
[CmdletBinding()]
param(
[int[]]
# The numbers of the machines whose output files should be removed.
$MachineNumbers
)
$MachineNumbers | ForEach-Object {
$machineRoot = '\\box_lab{0:d3}' -f $_
Get-ChildItem ('{0}\f$\output files' -f $machineRoot) -force |
Where-Object {!$_.PsIsContainer -AND $_.lastWriteTime -lt (Get-Date).AddMinutes(-5) } |
Select-Object LastWriteTime,#{n="Path";e={convert-path $_.PSPath}} |
Tee-Object ('{0}\c$\Users\john\Documents\output files_root.txt' -f $machineRoot) |
Remove-Item -force
The code ('\\box_lab{{0:d3}}' -f $_) converts each number passed from the user into a zero-padded, three character string (which appears to be your compuer naming schem). You would then call your script like this:
Remove-OutputFiles -MachineNumbers (1..10)
Remove-OutputFiles -MachineNumbers 1,2,3,4,5
You could give the MachineNumbers parameter a reasonable default, so that if no parameters are passed, it hits a default set of machines.
I would also uae the [CmdletBinding()] attribute to your script so you can pass -WhatIf to your script and see what files will be deleted without actually deleting them:
Remove-OutputFiles -MachineNumbers (1..3) -WhatIf