Convert Selected.System.String to System.String

Question

In Powershell, I'm calling [io.path]::GetExtension(..) as so:

...| Select-Object {[io.path]::GetExtension($_)}

and I get the following output:

[io.path]::GetExtension($_)
---------------------------






.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll                       
.dll

(Note some inputs lack an extension, so their output are empty)

And piping that to "Get-Member" produces:

   TypeName: Selected.System.String

Name                        MemberType   Definition                                
----                        ----------   ----------                                
Equals                      Method       bool Equals(System.Object obj)            
GetHashCode                 Method       int GetHashCode()                         
GetType                     Method       type GetType()                            
ToString                    Method       string ToString()                         
[io.path]::GetExtension($_) NoteProperty System.String [io.path]::GetExtension($_)=

However I want System.String, and not a Selected.System.String, as I want to Group-Object, and I (apparently) cannot group Selected.System.String as it doesn't implement IComparable.

Calling ".ToString()" doesn't throw an error, but it doesn't convert it to a string.

How can I produce a string, or convert the output to a string?

Change Select-Object {[io.path]::GetExtension($_)} to Select-Object -ExpandProperty Extension. — Bill_Stewart
– Bill_Stewart, Commented May 11, 2018 at 17:52
@Bill_Stewart "Property "Extension" cannot be found." In this case, $_ is a string when being piped. — Ranger
– Ranger, Commented May 11, 2018 at 17:54
@JacobColvin That doesn't seem to do anything. No output whatsoever; can't even pipe the output to Get-Member — Ranger
– Ranger, Commented May 11, 2018 at 18:00
I was assuming IO.FileInfo input objects (not unreasonable, since you did not specify what you were piping). In this case you would replace your Select-Object with ForEach-Object {[IO.Path]::GetExtension($_) }. — Bill_Stewart
– Bill_Stewart, Commented May 11, 2018 at 18:11
If you want a complete answer you should show complete code. Or even better provide a minimal reproducible example — EBGreen
– EBGreen, Commented May 11, 2018 at 18:18

Jacob Colvin · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-11 18:21:27Z

2

To print your outputs as strings, try this:

'C:\x.ini','C:\y.ini' | % { [io.path]::GetExtension($_) }

.ini

.ini

TypeName: System.String

In this case % or Foreach-Object will run the command for every input, generating the output you need. Select-Object will actually create a selection object which contains the output. There are many ways to print the contents of this object, but using Foreach-Object is likely the simplest.

edited May 11, 2018 at 18:21

answered May 11, 2018 at 17:56

Jacob Colvin

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2 Comments

Ranger Over a year ago

Someone down voted you. I'm not certain why, since this is the correct answer. I appreciate the help!

Jacob Colvin Over a year ago

@NexTerren Technically it's still fine to downvote an accepted answer if the quality is bad, or it's a bad solution, etc... However in this case I'm not sure why especially since they didn't leave a comment. Oh well

Maximilian Burszley · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-11 18:12:11Z

-1

If you're dealing with strings, I'd suggest just using regex:

$Paths -replace '.*?(\.\w+$)', '$1'

This will return you a [System.String[]] object with extensions in the form of .exe

answered May 11, 2018 at 18:12

Maximilian Burszley

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