Question:
I’m really struggling with what seems to be a simple thing. Any help is appreciated…
tldr; i’m trying to find and replace blank or NULL values from powershell
output to “No Data”
I am using the following powershell script to obtain installed application information
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Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* |
Below is sample output of the above script (filtered to my liking). I am taking this data, exporting it to CSV, in order to import into another application for analysis at a later time.
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Host : Computer1 DisplayName : AutoDWG DWG DXF Converter 2015 Version : Publisher : InstallDate : arrival_datetime : 2015-11-03T09:42:18 Host : Computer2 DisplayName : Beyond Compare Version 3.1.11 Version : Publisher : Scooter Software InstallDate : 20150218 arrival_datetime : 2015-11-03T09:42:18 |
the CSV export puts the data in the correct format, but where items have no data for version, publisher, etc…, it represents it as “,,” (see below)
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"Computer1","AutoDWG DWG DXF Converter 2015",,,,"2015-11-03T09:54:21" "Computer2","Beyond Compare Version 3.1.11",,"Scooter Software","20150218","2015-11-03T09:54:21" |
When importing the CSV, the blank values are re-interpreted as NULL, which throws the program for a loop, as it is expecting a string. I am attempting to change those to the string “No Data” but am having lots of trouble…
What would be the best way to handle this?
Answer:
Using Select-Object would be your best bet. Just pipe the data to Select-Object, but customize each desired property as follows:
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Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object Host, DisplayName, @{ Label = "Version" Expression = { if ($_.Version) { $_.Version } else { "No Data" } } }, Other Properties |