Vista - problems with $var | select-string -pattern $string -q

i'm trying to improve my existing code that fuctions as desired...here's the
snippet of code my current code...

foreach ($item in $list)
{get-childitem \\$item\share > $tempdir\$item.txt 2>&1}

foreach ($item in $list)
{
$variable = (get-childitem $tempdir\$item.txt | select-string -pattern
"$pattern" -q)
if (!$variable) { add-content $updatefile $item}
}

what i want to do is not have to redirect the gci command to a txt file
first...why not just assign the result to a variable...

foreach ($item in $list)
{
$gci = (get-ChildItem $path 2>&1)
$aVar = ($gci | select-string -pattern "$pattern" -q)
$err = ($gci | select-string -pattern "path not found" -q)
if (!$aVar) { add-content $file $item}
if ($err) {add-content $missingsharesfile $item}
}

but...when i do the select-string on the variable, it's giving me this...
PS C:\ps> $gci | Select-String -pattern $pattern -q
False
False

when i run the same SS on the the txt file that is the redirected gci output
(the code i use currently), it returns a True...1st, i'm not sure why i'm
getting a false...2nd, i'm not sure why it's returning 2 booleans isntead of
just 1...

also, here's the purpose of the script, should you have better ideas
I need to check network shares of a bunch of machines (in a text file -
$list) to: a) make sure they exist (hence the 2>&1 redirect of errors), and
b) check if the shares contain a specific file.
the desired output is:
if missing, put add-content to missing.txt,
if specific file IS found, then add-content to the found.txt
if file is NOT found, then add-content to notfound.txt

and...in the long run, i actually want this to update cells in an excel
spreadsheet instead of creating 3 text files, but i'll save that for another
post since it's pretty different from my situation here

Thanks a lot!

On Feb 7, 6:01*pm, Ben Christian <Ben
Christ...@xxxxxx> wrote:Hi!

You could keep things a lot simpler by using the Test-Path cmdlet:

ps> test-path \\machine\existingshare
True

ps> test-path \\machine\nonexistant
False

ps> test-path \\machine\existingshare\existingfile.txt
True

ps> test-path \\machine\existingshare\nonexistantfile.txt
False

Additionally, test-path accepts wildcards * and ?.

Hope this helps,

- Oisin

"Ben Christian" <Ben Christian@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:439E3140-032A-4A16-A55F-9B3377DA4A4C@xxxxxxSo given Oisin suggestion, that would give you something like:

foreach ($share in $shares)
{
if (!(Test-Path $share)) {
Add-Content missingShares.txt $share
continue
}
if (Get-ChildItem $share | where {$_.Name -match '^theFileName\.txt$'}) {
Add-Content found.txt $share
}
else {
Add-Content notFound.txt $share
}
}
First in this scenario you wouldn't want to mix up ErrorRecord objects (by
using 2>&1) with normal GCI output (FileInfo/DirectoryInfo). Second,
select-string is searching the contents of each file in your share looking
for a pattern match which in this case I'm guessing there a two items (file
or dir) in the share dir. In your first example you output the share's
contents (file and dir names) to a temp file. Then you essentially do a dir
of a file (kind of a no-op) and then select-string search that temp file so
your pattern matches appropriately.

BTW this stuff can be a bit overwhelming at first so I encourage you to
continue asking questions.

--
Keith

Thanks! I'll try it out!

"Keith Hill [MVP]" wrote: