Input string was not in a correct format in powershell

Question

I am facing the error "Input string was not in a correct format." while using the variable in for loop.

$totalrows=$filepath |% {$n = $_; $c = 0; Get-Content -Path $_ -ReadCount 1000 |% { $c += $_.Count }; "$n; $c"}
echo $totalrows

Output is 8 and it is correct.

Used this variable in for loop:

For ($i = 0; $i -lt $totalrows; $i++) {
    Write-host $i 
}

but i get the error :

8" to type "System.Int32". Error: "Input string was not in a correct format."

So, I looked into SO for same questions so i found to typecast into integer:

$totalrows=$filepath |% {$n = $_; $c = 0; Get-Content -Path $_ -ReadCount 1000 |% { $c += $_.Count }; "$n; $c"}
$totalrowscast=[int]$totalrows
echo $totalrowscast

For ($i = 0; $i -lt $totalrowscast; $i++) {
    Write-host $i 
}

But still I am facing the same error.

Put a write-host $totalrows.gettype() to see what type you are getting. — vonPryz
– vonPryz, Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 9:42
What do you expect? The last item on pipeline is a string: "$n; $c" that will give you a string that contains two things separated with a semicolon. — vonPryz
– vonPryz, Commented Feb 2, 2022 at 9:51

Mathias R. Jessen · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-02 10:13:46Z

1

You're outputting a single string containing both the path AND the row count, eg. "path; 8", which can't be converted to a numerical type, hence the error.

You don't need to manually count each chunk read by Get-Content - the cmdlet already adds a line number to each string it outputs, so you can simply discard everything but the last line and its line number will be the line count (excluding any trailing newline):

$totalrows = Get-Content $filepath |Select -Last 1 -ExpandProperty ReadCount

The ReadCount property is already an [int], so everything will start working expected, including $i -lt $totalrows

answered Feb 2, 2022 at 10:13

Mathias R. Jessen

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