Using Powershell's bitwise operators

Question

I'm looking for example of how I would solve the scenario below:

Imagine my printer has the following property for "Status"
0 -Offline
2 -Paper Tray Empty
4 -Toner Exhausted
8 -Paper Jam

When I query status it returns a value of 12. I can obviously see that this means the printer has the Toner Exhausted and a Paper Jam, but how would I work this out with Powershell?

Thanks

driis · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-26 17:42:35Z

41

The boolean bitwise and operator in Powershell is -band.

Assume you define your values and descriptions in a hashtable, and have the value of 12 from the printer:

 $status = @{1 = "Offline" ; 2 = "Paper Tray Empty" ; 4 = "Toner Exhausted" ; 8 = "Paper Jam" }
 $value = 12

Then, this statement will give you the textual descriptions:

$status.Keys | where { $_ -band $value } | foreach { $status.Get_Item($_) }

You could define the enum in Powershell, but the above works just as well, and defining enums in Powershell seems like a lot of work.

Here is an article, that talks about how to use the bitwise operators in Powershell.

edited Apr 26, 2018 at 17:42

answered Apr 15, 2010 at 19:06

driis

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3 Comments

Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware- Over a year ago

The last article URL does not exist anymore

driis Over a year ago

Thanks, found another one to link to (the fallacies of 8-year old answers...)

Jeremy Bradshaw Over a year ago

10 years later, I'm just finally coming into interest in this bitwise stuff and found this answer incredibly helpful. Belated thanks!

Keith Hill · Accepted Answer · 2010-04-15 19:45:01Z

11

You can let PowerShell do more of the work for you. Here's an example using System.IO.FileOptions:

PS> [enum]::GetValues([io.fileoptions]) | ?{$_.value__ -band 0x90000000}
RandomAccess
WriteThrough

answered Apr 15, 2010 at 19:45

Keith Hill

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2 Comments

fenster Over a year ago

Thanks Keith, do you happen to know if it's possible to enumerate the values of the UserAccountControl attribute for a user in AD?

Keith Hill Over a year ago

If the attribute is a .NET attribute then yes. You just need to specify the full typename to [enun]::GetValues().

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