String to Date error

Question

In PowerShell, I am trying to convert a string that I selected from a text file to a date so I can add or substract days, hours and so on from it. The problem is that when I try to convert the resulted string from the text file, I receive the following error:

Exception calling "ParseExact" with "3" argument(s): "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime."

At line:15 char:5

+     [datetime]::ParseExact($SC4,'HH:mm:ss', $null)
+     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : FormatException

The Code:

Get-Content results2.txt | ForEach-Object{
$splitUp = $_ -split " "
$SC=$splitUp[0] -split " "
$SC2=$splitUp[1] -split " "
$SC3=$SC + $SC2
Write-Host -NoNewline $SC3 | Write-Output $SC4
Write-Host $SC4
$r=[datetime]::ParseExact($SC4,'dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss', $null)
echo $r

}

The file result2.txt, from which I read, contains the following:

09/07/2017 16:35:56 - 2017-09-07 14:55:51,312 [342]
09/07/2017 16:35:56 - 2017-09-07 14:55:51,312 [342]
09/07/2017 16:35:56 - 2017-09-07 14:56:54,918 [305]
09/07/2017 16:35:56 - 2017-09-07 14:58:36,133 [113]

Mark Wragg · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-08 14:06:13Z

1

The problem is because $SC4 is an empty variable. Your attempt to populate it via a pipe of output from Write-Host doesn't work (because Write-Host writes to the console and not to the pipeline).

That whole part over complicates things and can just be removed. This works fine in my testing:

Get-Content result2.txt | ForEach-Object {
    $splitUp = $_ -split " "
    $SC=$splitUp[0] -split " "
    $SC2=$splitUp[1] -split " "
    $SC3 = $SC + $SC2
    $r=[datetime]::ParseExact($SC3,'dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss', $null)
    echo $r
}

Here's a shorter solution that uses regex to match the first date in the file:

Get-Content result2.txt | ForEach-Object {
    $Check = $_ -Match '^\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}(?= .*$)'
    If ($Check) { $R=[datetime]::ParseExact($Matches[0],'dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss', $null) }
    Echo $R
}

edited Sep 8, 2017 at 14:06

answered Sep 8, 2017 at 13:56

Mark Wragg

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1 Comment

Dragos Cazangiu Over a year ago

Thanks! Now it works. I did that because if I display $SC3 it shows the date on one row and time on the next one so I thought it will interfere with the format required by ParseExact. Thanks again!

Esperento57 · Accepted Answer · 2017-09-08 17:23:53Z

0

Other method:

Get-Content "c:\temp\test.txt" | ForEach-Object {
    [datetime]::ParseExact(($_ -split " - ")[0],'dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss', $null)
}


#short version
gc "c:\temp\test.txt" |%{[datetime]::ParseExact(($_ -split " - ")[0],'dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss', $null)}

answered Sep 8, 2017 at 17:23

Esperento57

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