Powershell - dealing with {host1, host2, host3, ....}

Question

Hello,
I'm working on a Clustered Windows 2012 R2 server, and I'd like to get the list the Preferred Owner list of some cluster Resources, but we have many nodes and the output is not readable from powershell because when use the standard command but it
shows something like {server1, server2,.....} and the output on the screen is not complete.
Then I've tried to get the output in table mode, but I don't know how to get it, I've used the following command using a "join" trick and I'm getting more or less what I want.
get-clusterresource
|
Where{$_.resourcetype 
-match
"MyResourceType"}
|
get-clusterownernode | select clusterobject,,@{n='PrefOwners';e={$_.ownernodes
-join","}}
|ft-a
I've got something like the following, all the Owners are included on a single column. I may survive with this, but I'll have to perform a second filter (excel) over  this output to split each PrefOwner in single columns.
Resource Name                  PrefOwners
"Cluster Resource name"    "PrefOwner1,PrefOwner2,PrefOwner3,prefOwner4,PrefOwner5"
And I'd like to go an step further, what I want is have something like the following where each preferred owner has their own column.
Resource Name                  owner1            owner2            
Owner3           .......
"Cluster Resource name"    "PrefOwner1"   "PrefOwner2"     "PrefOwner3"   .......
How can I get this type of output on one single command?
Best Regards
Regards.

Answer 1

And what's wrong with multiple commands?
Your best bet would be to create a custom object with the columns you're after, but that involves iterating through each owner and you won't get it on a single command.
However, bearing in mind that you're you're using Windows 2012 R2 which comes with PowerShell 4 and that you're quite keen on concise statements, there are things you can do to shorten your version so far (and make it faster! MOAR SPEED!)
A quick example: since PowerShell v4 you can now invoke a .Where() method on collections. It runs faster than piping it to a Where-Object, does exactly the same thing, and the syntax is pretty much the same too. Here's an example:
# New PowerShell v4 way, fastest
(Get-Service).Where({$_.Name -eq 'spooler'})
# PowerShell v3 way, faster than PS <v3 ways
Get-Service | Where-Object Name -eq spooler
# Notice I don't even need to put quotes around the service name, whereas on all the other methods I do. Talk about being lazy!
# Old way... Slowest one
Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.Name -eq 'spooler'}
For comparison, I ran some tests on all 3 ways by invoking each way 10 times and using Measure-Command to capture the times
The v4 way took 160ms~ to run.
The v3 way took 350ms~ to run.
The <v3 way took 450ms~ to run.
I ran all tests multiple times with consistent results, so there you go!
Now... as for your custom object, as I said you can't do it in a single call (unless you want to have all your code cluttered in a line with over 200 characters and expect someone to be able to read it - this is not code art (http://www.dalatdesigns.com/blog/?p=11678).
Anyway, here's a method. I don't have any clusters, so I settled for reading the displaying each of the properties of a WMI instance as one per column, but you get the idea:
# I *should* have used the -Filter parameter of Get-WmiObject here but am trying to get something as similar to your code as possible
$Processes = (Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Process).Where({$_.Name -eq 'PowerShell.exe'})
#It is better not to use a pipeline here else you have no way of telling when the subproperties you're dealing with now are from the old object or the new one
foreach ($Process in $Processes)
$output = @{}
$output.Name = $Process.Name
# Normally it would work like this, but in WMI objects you can't retrieve them based on index, only name so... It should work for your objects though, give it a try!
#for ($i = 0; $i -lt $Process.Properties.Count; $i++)
#$output."Property$i" = $Process.Properties[$i].Name
# As in this case we can't reference the property based on an index, we have to take another route...
$i = 0
foreach ($Property in $Process.Properties)
$output."Property$i" = $Property.Name
$i++
$outputArray += New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $output
$outputArray | Format-Table *
Obviously in my particular case the result will be almost unreadable as a table, since there's no more no less than 42 different properties on that object, but hey, this is what you asked for! You deal with it now :D
PS: I'm just in a good mood today. No idea why, but I am. Please don't follow my 'You deal with it now' to the letter. If you have problems or questions come back!