PowerShell Split string into variables

Question

I have a line a text and I want the first word to be a variable, the second to be a second but all the rest to be consider one single var.

For example splitting Mary had a little lamb would result in:

$var[1] = Mary
$var[2] = had
$var[4] = a little lamb

How can I achieve this when I split by space?

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2014/07/17/using-the-split-method-in-powershell/ — Pankaj Jaju, Jul 12 '17 at 14:55

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 13 '17 at 07:55

If you know the exact length of the first two words you can use .substring. Otherwise, you can use -Split and then use -join after assigning the first two array entries to your variables.

$mySplit = "alpha bravo charlie delta" -split " "
$var1 = $mySplit[0]
$var2 = $mySplit[1]
$var3 = $mySplit[2..($mySplit.length+2)] -join " "

The above example for $var3 grabs the array created by the -split and gets every entry except the first 2. The -join will then join the array entries back together into a single string separating each entry by a space.

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 12 '17 at 15:03

$a="Mary had a little lamb"
$v1,$v2,$v3=$a.split(" ",3)

The split is what turns a string into an array, the "3" is the limit of how many parts to split into, and the variable list to the left of "=" is what make the result to end up in corresponding variables.

PS > $v3
a little lamb 
PS >

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 12 '17 at 15:04

1

Simply tell Split the number of elements to return:

$string = "Mary had a little lamb"
$var = $string.Split(" ",3)

Which will return:

Mary
had
a little lamb

You can then reference each element individually:

$var[0]
$var[1]
$var[2]

answered Jul 12 '17 at 15:04

henrycarteruk

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PowerShell Split string into variables

3 Answers3