Powershell not merging files

Question

Hi there,
I am literally hours new at Powershell scripting. I took on a project of developing a process that would scan a folder for presence of files matching a specific pattern:
fileprefix.MMDDYYY.[a-z].dat (please note regex [a-z] where a to z represents  presence of a single letter only followed by file extension .dat).
So far I was able to come up with the code below:
## List of files available in target folder:
## asodent.20140829.a.dat, asodent.20140829.b.dat, asophys.20140827.a.dat, asophys.20140827.b.dat, asophys.20140827.c.dat
$asodent = @(); $asoinst = @(); $asopharm = @(); $asophrm = @();$asophys = @()
$filetype = @()
$date = ("{0:yyyy-MM-dd}" -f (get-date)) -replace "-",""
## file suffixes
$asodent_sufx =@(); $asoinst_sufx =@(); $asopharm_sufx =@(); $asophrm_sufx =@(); $asophys_sufx =@()
## 1 - Code defining and assigning suffixes values here
Foreach($filename in $Filelist){
if ($filename -like "asodent.*")
$asodent += ,$filename
$asodent_sufx = -join ($asodent_sufx + (($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[4])
$filetype += ,(($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[0]
elseif ($filename -like "asoinst.*")
$asoinst += ,$filename
$asoinst_sufx = -join ($asoinst_sufx + (($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[4])
$filetype += ,(($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[0]
elseif ($filename -like "asopharm.*")
$asopharm += ,$filename
$asopharm_sufx = -join ($asopharm_sufx + (($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[4])
$filetype += ,(($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[0]
elseif ($filename -like "asophrm.*")
$asophrm += ,$filename
$asophrm_sufx = -join ($asophrm_sufx + (($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[4])
$filetype += ,(($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[0]
else{
$asophys += ,$filename;
$asophys_sufx = -join ($asophys_sufx + (($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[4])
$filetype += ,(($filename -replace('\.','-')) -split "(-)")[0]
## 2 - Determinig available file types to process based on process above (step 1)
$filetype = $filetype | select -uniq
## 3 - Stitching files together based on available types (see prior step)
Foreach ($type in $filetype)
if ($type = "asodent"){$suffix = $asodent_sufx}
elseif($type = "asoinst"){$suffix = $asoinst_sufx}
elseif($type = "asopharm_sufx"){$suffix = $asopharm_sufx}
elseif($type = "asophrm_sufx"){$suffix = $asophrm_sufx}
else{$suffix = $asophys_sufx}
$combinedfile = $type + "."+ $date + "." + $suffix + ".dat"
$string = $type +".*"
Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {(-not $_.PSIsContainer) -and $_.Name -like $string} |
% { Get-Content $_ -ReadCount 0 |
Add-Content .\$combinedfile }
cls
Write-Host "Process complete !"
Read-Host
I am having issues getting the script above to merge provided files (see script for details). It stops stitching them together after the first merge is processed. It does not complete the process by processing the second merge operation. Is there
anything I am missing that is causing the script to stop the process halfway?  (it shows "Process complete" even though it did not kick off the second stitching operation).
Any help would be truly appreciated

Answer 1

Hi Tshindaye,
The script below is for your reference, which can merge the files based on the same prefix and the date time and create a new file under D:\:
$dats=Get-ChildItem d:\ -Recurse|where{$_.name -match "\w.\d{8}.[a-z].dat"}|sort name #filter the files with the format and sort the files
$cont=@()
$match=""
for ($i = 0; $i -lt $dats.Count; $i++){
$m1=$dats[$i].basename.split(".")
if ($m1[0] -eq $match.split(".")[0] -and $m1[1] -eq $match.split(".")[1]){ #filter the merge files based on the same prefix and date time in filename.
$des+=$m1[2] # create the destination file path
$cont+=Get-Content $dats[$i].fullname -ReadCount 0
if ($dats[$i+1] -ne $null){
$m2=$dats[$i+1].basename.split(".")
if ($m2[0] -ne $match.split(".")[0] -and $m2[1] -ne $match.split(".")[1]){ # if the next file is not equal the reference file
$newfile = $des+".dat"
$cont|add-content $newfile # merge content to D:\aaa.20140828.ab.dat
$cont=@() }
else {$newfile = $des+".dat"
$cont|add-content $newfile # merge content to D:\aaa.20140828.ab.dat #if this file is the last one in the array $dats then merge these files
$cont=@()}
else {
$match = $dats[$i].basename
$des="D:\"+$match
$cont=Get-Content $dats[$i].fullname -ReadCount 0}
The script above maybe not the best one, however, this script can filter all the files based on the specific foramt under D:\, and merge these files to a new one like:
The filtered files under D:\:
D:\test\4\asodent.20140827.c.dat
D:\test\4\asodent.20140829.a.dat
D:\test\asodent.20140829.b.dat
D:\test\1\asophys.20140827.a.dat
D:\test\4\asophys.20140827.b.dat
D:\test\4\asophys.20140827.c.dat
The merged files:
D:\asodent.20140829.ab.dat
D:\asophys.20140827.abc.dat
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Best Regards,
Anna Wang
TechNet Community Support