Trouble with powershell commas

Question

Im trying to write a very brief powershell script that runs a few commands, pipes their output to a text file, and then does a search against a keyword.

I cant figure out what to change however for this line:

wmic service get name, startname | out-File "$pwd\admin\wmic.txt"

WMIC.exe : Invalid GET Expression.
At \\test.ps1:7 char:5
+ wmic <<<<  service get name startname | out-File "$pwd\admin\wmic.txt"
+ CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (Invalid GET Expression.:String) [], RemoteException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError

I believe the error is generated from the ',' as powershell uses the comma to create an array. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks

I'm currious why you are using WMIC? PS has much better ways to access WMI (Get-WMIObject). It even has cmlets that are specific to working with services (Get-Service). — EBGreen, Jun 22 '12 at 17:10
Quotes do not work, I believe its not syntactically correct. — ToastyMallows, Jun 22 '12 at 17:16
I will give that a shot EBGreen. Still semi-new to PS and was unaware of that cmdlet. Thank you. — Jingles177, Jun 22 '12 at 17:21

score 14 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 24 '14 at 02:00

14

wmic service get name"," startname| out-File "$pwd\admin\wmic.txt"

This is easy to resolve comma, no change at all.

edited Sep 24 '14 at 02:00

Pokechu22

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answered Sep 24 '14 at 01:23

Raymond Cheng

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I think this comment is better and should be accepted answer. – Serhiy Prysyazhnyy Jun 25 '15 at 16:29

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 03 '21 at 18:21

8

Beginning with PowerShell 3.0 there is the new escaping operator --% available (see magic parameter in the release notes):

wmic --% service get name, startname | out-File "$pwd\admin\wmic.txt"

This operator is known as the stop-parsing operator, and it instructs PowerShell to stop interpreting input from that point forward as PowerShell commands or expressions (see docs here).

edited Jun 03 '21 at 18:21

pb2q

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answered Jul 06 '15 at 22:45

Cwt

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Thanks for this @sevenforce. To be pedantic, an equivalent command is `wmic service get --% name, start name | out-File ...` because it's the commas and whitespace that start to cause the problem – pb2q Jun 03 '21 at 18:48

score 1 · Answer 3 · 2012-06-22T17:56:04.937

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The answer to this question lies in the use of the Start-Process cmdlet. This will make interpretation of command line arguments much easier, since you can also construct the command line arguments ahead of time, store them in a variable, and then reference them using the variable name.

$WmicArgs = 'service get name, startname';
Start-Process -FilePath wmic.exe -ArgumentList $WmicArgs;

But, why are you even using WMIC.exe?

There are easier ways to work with WMI, like using the PowerShell type accelerators [wmi], [wmiclass], [wmisearcher], and the Get-WmiObject cmdlet.

edited Jun 22 '12 at 17:56

answered Jun 22 '12 at 17:49

Im using WMIC because I need to find all of the locations where "administrator" is used. I planned to get the output of wmic service and store that into a text file. Then from here do a search on the word administrator and return that whole line to a new file if possible. – Jingles177 Jun 22 '12 at 18:44
What information exactly do you need from WMI? What do you mean by "locations where Administrator is used?" I might be able to help you further. – Jun 22 '12 at 19:58
I just needed to see what name and startname are running for the WMIC. Its a little vague cause im not sure how to explain what I am attempting to do. I ended up going with a simple batch script to run the above command, pipe to a file and then parse that file for the keyword, and then finally send that information to a new file for later use. Thank you for your help however. – Jingles177 Jun 22 '12 at 21:24

Trouble with powershell commas

3 Answers3