Powershell - filtering output of command

Question

I'm quite new to powershell, but I've done a lot of batch scripting (yay for moving into the 'now!'). I'm trying to re-write my largest accomplishment in batch scripting into powershell, and right off the bat I'm hitting a bit of a wall.

What my original batch script did was install drivers for all of the detected system hardware. It did this by running devcon.exe and doing a search on the output, looking for VEN_ &DEV_ and trying to match it up with a comparison. This took a bit of time on slower computers (i3/Atom/slow AMD).

I stumbled across this command in powershell: get-wmiobject -class CIM_VideoController PNPDeviceID

It spits out a list which contains just a few bits of info on the display adapter. The line in particular I'd like is the PNPDeviceID. I so far haven't had much luck in finding a way to manupulate the output to list just the VEN_ numbers. Here's what I'd like to do: Run the command above, manipulate it so I get just the vendor number into one variable and the device number into another variable. I tried doing this:

get-wmiobject -class CIM_VideoController PNPDeviceID | Select-String -Pattern "PNPDeviceID" -SimpleMatch

The problem I'm having is, it spits out nothing at all. I also have no clue on how to manipulate the output of that line further giving me only the 4 digit identifier of the 'VEN_' or the 'DEV_'.

Would anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

You can just do this:

$deviceID = (get-wmiobject -class CIM_VideoController).PNPDeviceID

the output of such objects are allways stored in a property which you can access by dot notation

Answer 2

I mean no disrespect, but this is pretty basic stuff. Have you considered finding a book (even an online one) and reading up on PowerShell? I've heard good things about Learning PowerShell In A Month Of Lunches.

As for your request, to get the four digit ID you could pipe that property's value to a regex match, and then output that match. It could be done like this:

$VidCardID = get-wmiobject -class CIM_VideoController PNPDeviceID | Where{$_.PNPDeviceID -match "VEN_(\d{4})"} | ForEach{$Matches[1]}

That will set $VidCardID to the 4 digit ID for the video card.