Loop X number of times

Question

I'm working on my first PowerShell script and can't figure the loop out.

I have the following, which will repeat $ActiveCampaigns number of times:

Write-Host "Creating $PQCampaign1 Pre-Qualified Report"
Invoke-Item "$PQCampaignPath1\PQ REPORT $PQCampaign1.qvw"
Write-Host "Waiting 1 minute for QlikView to update"
sleep -seconds 60 # Wait 1 minute for QlikView to Reload, create Report and Save.

DO{
    Write-Host "Daily Qlikview Reports"
    Write-Host "Wating for QlikView to create the $PQCampaign1 PQ Report"
    Get-Date
    Write-Host "Checking...."
    sleep -seconds 1
    Write-Host ""
    Write-Host "Not Done Yet"
    Write-Host "Will try again in 5 seconds."
    Write-Host ""
    sleep -seconds 5
}

Until (Test-Path "$PQCampaignPath1\$PQCampaign1 $PQReportName $ReportDate.xlsx" -pathType leaf)

Get-Date
Write-Host "Done with $PQCampaign1 PQ Report. Wait 10 seconds."
sleep -seconds 10

These parameters need to increase with one for each loop:

• $PQCampaign1 (should become $PQCampaign2 , then 3, etc.)
• $PQCampaignPath1 (should become $PQCampaignPath2 , then 3, etc.)

So if $ActiveCampaigns is set to 8 on a certain day, then this needs to repeat 8 times and the last time it must open $PQCampaign3 which lies in $PQCampaignPath8 .

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Use:

1..10 | % { write "loop $_" }

Output:

PS D:\temp> 1..10 | % { write "loop $_" }
loop 1
loop 2
loop 3
loop 4
loop 5
loop 6
loop 7
loop 8
loop 9
loop 10

Answer 2

This may be what you are looking for:

for ($i=1; $i -le $ActiveCampaigns; $i++)
{
  $PQCampaign     = Get-Variable -Name "PQCampaign$i"     -ValueOnly
  $PQCampaignPath = Get-Variable -Name "PQCampaignPath$i" -ValueOnly

  # Do stuff with $PQCampaign and $PQCampaignPath
}

Answer 3

Here is a simple way to loop any number of times in PowerShell.

It is the same as the for loop above, but much easier to understand for newer programmers and scripters. It uses a range, and foreach. A range is defined as:

range = lower..upper

or

$range = 1..10

A range can be used directly in a for loop as well, although not the most optimal approach, any performance loss or additional instruction to process would be unnoticeable. The solution is below:

foreach($i in 1..10){
    Write-Host $i
}

Or in your case:

$ActiveCampaigns = 10
foreach($i in 1..$ActiveCampaigns)
{
    Write-Host $i
    If($i==$ActiveCampaigns){
        // Do your stuff on the last iteration here
    }
}

Answer 4

See this link . It shows you how to dynamically create variables in PowerShell.

Here is the basic idea:

Use New-Variable and Get-Variable ,

for ($i=1; $i -le 5; $i++)
{
    New-Variable -Name "var$i" -Value $i
    Get-Variable -Name "var$i" -ValueOnly
}

(It is taken from the link provided, and I don't take credit for the code.)