Hi,

Iam using the get-qaduser cmdlet in order to retrieve ad users. Then i want to pipe the returned user to where in order to look for some info in the Description field. I am trying to use the following line but it does not work as intended:

> get-qaduser -some things | where {($_.Description -inotmatch "SA:") -or ($_.Description -inotmatch "SC:")}

The problem is that users that have SA: or SC: in their descriptions will still appear in the final output. But if i do like this:

> get-qaduser -some things | where {($_.Description -inotmatch "SA:")} | where {($_.Description -inotmatch "SC:")}

Then it seem to do the job right. But why can i not use -or? I would prefer that over piping to where two times.

I would suggest letting AD filter the data, try an LDAP filter like the one below.  PowerShell is great but nothing is faster than AD...

Get-QADUser -searchRoot 'fabricam.com/users' -SizeLimit 0 -LdapFilter `
 '(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(!description=*SA:*)(!description=*SC:*))'

~Glenn

I was under the impression that LDAP filters were efficient...

Statistics
=================================
Elapsed Time: 70906.25 (ms)
Returned 202037 entries of 202037 visited - (100.00 %)

Used Filter:
-  ( &  (objectCategory=CN=Person,CN=Schema,CN=Configuration,,DC=bleh,DC=com)  (objectClass=user) ( !  (description=*SA
:*) ) ( !  (description=*SC:*) ) )

Used Indices:
- idx_objectCategory:70997:N;

@BSonPosh

cool, I haven't lost my mind or fallen out of touch :) ...  When you said efficent, I thought you had some crazy ADSI back door .net hook(wouldn't be the first time).  I do agree that wildcard searches are a last resort, but the speed of ldap filters just blow my mind. I tried to use where-object to filter efficently. After two days I gave up, and added an ldap filter, execution time went from 8 sec to >1.  Don't get me wrong there is nothing powershell can't do, but simmilar to a SQL query... How you ask for the data is more important then what you do with it.

@hal

Point taken, but I would still argue that the sooner you get data out of the pipeline the faster it will perform.  Regaurdless of how great ?{} is... there is a performace hit when asking it proccess 20,000 object vice 2,000.  I'm sure you already know that... now small to medium data sets Where/Select are the way to go IMO.

@frejen

Didn't mean to jack your tread.  Hope your question was answered... either way (help about_logical_operator)... Doesn't matter what I'm working on. I always have an extra posh console up just to refer back to the help docs.

~Glenn

$myDescriptions = 1..2 | %{"Really descriptive 's$_' description"}
$myDescriptions += "My Description has an 'SC:' in it"
$myDescriptions += "My Description has an 'SA:' in it"

foreach($description in $myDescriptions)
{
    $matchSC                = $description  -notmatch "SC:"
    $matchSA                = $description  -notmatch "SA:"
    $UsingOr                = ($description -notmatch "SC:") -or ($description -notmatch "SA:")
    $UsingNotMatchCorrectly = $description  -notmatch "(SC|SA):"
    
    "Value:                    $description"
    "Match SC:                 $matchSC"
    "Match SA:                 $matchSA"
    "The Or:                   $UsingOr"  
    "Using NotMatch Correctly: $UsingNotMatchCorrectly"
    
    Write-Host
}

###############################################################
Value:                    Really descriptive 's1' description
Match SC:                 True
Match SA:                 True
The Or:                   True
Using NotMatch Correctly: True

Value:                    Really descriptive 's2' description
Match SC:                 True
Match SA:                 True
The Or:                   True
Using NotMatch Correctly: True

Value:                    My Description has an 'SC:' in it
Match SC:                 False
Match SA:                 True
The Or:                   True
Using NotMatch Correctly: False

Value:                    My Description has an 'SA:' in it
Match SC:                 True
Match SA:                 False
The Or:                   True
Using NotMatch Correctly: False
###############################################################