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powershellscriptingjagged-arrays

Iterate through jagged array

I'm learning Powershell Scripting and right now I'm trying to iterate through an array consisting of 2 value arrays while only printing out the first value.

For example, take the below array;

$array = (("fizz", "buzz"),
          ("foo", "bar"))

I would like to be able to print out the first values, so fizz and buzz.

Right now, I have the following code;

Foreach ($a in $array)
{
    Write-Host $a[0]
}

What I should be getting is fizz, but instead I'm getting fizz buzz [0]

Thanks

Solution

  • You need to think of the multidimensional array as a table with rows and columns like so:

    enter image description here

    so in your example where you want to get the first two columns in the first row, what you want is 

    $array[0][0]
$array[0][1]

    You can check this by running:

    Write-Host $array[0][0]
Write-Host $array[0][1]

    What you are doing is iterating through each row and printing out column 0 for each row.

    Foreach ($a in $array)
{
    Write-Host $a[0]
}

    This is saying foreach row in $array print out column 0. To get your code working as expected you would need to change $array to $array[0]:

    Foreach ($a in $array[0])
{
    Write-Host $a
}

    This will give you the expected results and reads as foreach column in row 0 print column. The loop is however unnecessary as you can get the same result by simply using:

    Write-Host $array[0]

    Which just prints out the entire row.