How to turn a string into an array?

Question

Assuming I have a string like this:

$x = "abc"

I want to know, How can I turn it into an array like: ("a","b","c") ???

Currently I use something like:

$x -split ""

But that gives me an array like: ("","a","b","c","") with an empty element before and after the other ones...

I can circumvent this doing $x -split "" -ne "" , but that seems kind of weird. Is there a better way?

Answer 1

You can use the System.String.ToCharArray method:

PS > $x = "abc"
PS > $x.ToCharArray()
a
b
c

PS > ($x.ToCharArray()).GetType()

IsPublic     IsSerial     Name     BaseType
--------     --------     ----     --------
True         True         Char[]   System.Array    

Answer 2

Casting the string to a character array is probably the simplest way to go about this:

PS C:\> 
PS C:\> 
abc
PS C:\> 
a
b
c

Answer 3

You could also use a regular expression to filter out the beginning and end of the string:

PS > $x -split "(?<!(^|$))"
A
B
C
PS >

Hope this helps /Fridden