Powershell: Move Items Based on Destination from Hashtable

Question

I'm attempting to write a PowerShell script to move files from one directory to another based on a few conditions. For example:

1. An example of a file name: testingcenter123456-testtype-222-412014.pdf.

2. The script should look for "testingcenter123456" before the first dash ("-") and then refer to a hash table for a matching key. All the files follow the format shown above.

3. Once its finds that key, it should use that key's corresponding value (example: "c:\temp\destination\customer7890") as the destination file path and copy the file there.

I looked around StackOverflow and found a few Q&As that seemed to answer parts of similar questions but the fact that I'm very new to this has led to the script I pieced together not working at all.

Here's what I have so far:

$hashTable = ConvertFrom-StringData ([IO.File]::ReadAllText("c:\temp\filepaths.txt"))
$directory = "c:\temp\source"
Get-ChildItem $directory |
    where {!($_.PsIsContainer)} |
    Foreach-Object {
    Foreach ($key in $hashTable.GetEnumerator()){
       if ($_.Name.Substring(0,$_.Name.IndexOf("-")) -eq $key.Name){
       Copy-Item -Path $_.fullname -Destination $key.Value
       }
    }
    }

If anyone can help me get un-stuck and hopefully learn a little something about PowerShell in the process, I'd appreciate it.

Answer 1

Honestly, I'm not seeing why this shouldn't work. It would be helpful if you told us which line was generating an error.

Foreach ($key in $hashTable.GetEnumerator()) {
   if ($_.Name.Substring(0,$_.Name.IndexOf("-")) -eq $key.Name) {
   Copy-Item -Path $_.fullname -Destination $key.Value
   }
}

That said, you're missing the point of using hashtable by looping through its entries, manually matching on key. With a hashtable, you don't need to loop e.g.

$hashTable = ConvertFrom-StringData ([IO.File]::ReadAllText("c:\temp\filepaths.txt"))
Get-ChildItem c:\temp\source |
Where {!($_.PsIsContainer)} |
Foreach-Object {
    $key =  $_.Name.Substring(0,$_.Name.IndexOf("-"))
    $val = $hashtable.$key
    if ($val) {
        $_ | Copy-Item -Dest $val -WhatIf
    }
    else {
        Write-Warning "No entry for $key"
    }
}