Hi all,

First, I am in the process of converting to Powershell from another scripting language (not a commonly used one I might add) so please bear with me if this is a trivial question.

I have written a function (get-words) that takes a string and tokenises it into individual words using one or more blanks as the delimiter. I'm sure there is a more elegant way of doing it than I have created but the solution should work even if it is a bit clunky.

The function returns an array of strings where each array element is 1 word. The function seems to work fine until it returns the array to the caller. After returning an array to the caller, the element counts has increased by 1 and the first element is now blank!

For example from the caller:

$returnedArray = get-words "abcd efg       hij "

would give something like this:

$returnedArray[0] = blank
$returnedArray[1] = "abcd"
$returnedArray[2] = "efg"
$returnedArray[3] = "hij"
and $returnedArray.count = 4

but from within the function:

function get-words ([string] $aString)
{
  ... some processing to split the string
   $returnArray
}
  
you would get:
$returnArray[0] = "abcd"
$returnArray[1] = "efg"
$returnArray[2] = "hij"
and $returnArray.count = 3 


Can anyone offer a reason for this mysterious extra array element that appears after the function call. It's very frustrating when you know you can do the same thing in another language and get the result you expect!

Many thanks, Innes

Without reading your code verbatim I would have to guess that you have a leading space/line break/hidden char in the string. 

Fortunately though your situation is one that lends it self to powershell.  mainly because you really don't need a "script" at all.

(" abcd     efg     h   i j ").split(" ") | where-object {$_ -ne " "}

On a side note your post led me down a rabbit hole as to why it all worked. ... so thanks!

~Glenn

The split() method takes a StringSplitOptions parameter which you can use to discard empty elements:

PS > "abcd efg hij ".split(" ",[StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries)
abcd
efg
hij

Guys,

thanks for your replies. I knew there would be an elegant way to do what I wanted in Powershell and I wasn't disappointed. It's wicked that you can compress a dozen lines of code into a single command to do what you need.

However it still didn't solve my problem of the extra array element in the emitted output from the function call. After a good nights sleep and Glenn's tip off I found my problem in the function. Here's where I went wrong. In my function I wanted to specifically declare an empty string variable, which I did like so: [string] $word Ooops! This inadvertantly emitted my extra element. What I should have done to create my empty variable was: $word = [string] and with that change my function did exactly what I expected.

Despite not needing my overblown get-words function now I've learnt some valuable Powershell lessons from having gone through the whole process.

Cheers, Innes