replace not matching my string

[craigey]

I have a script that uses convertToHtml, which all works fine, except it produces multiple table headers due to the way I'm looping through a list of server names. I'm trying to tidy this up if only the replace procedure would play nicely. Instead it seems to fail matching the string that I want to replace/ remove as it contains spaces.

I know that a -replace will use a reg-exp to match the string, but when trying a .replace I get a message saying that "[system.object[]] doesn't contain a method named 'replace'". I have tried entering the string as a reg exp string, which matches correctly when used with online regular expression testers.

#$stringtoreplace = " </table> <table> <colgroup> <col/> <col/> <col/> <col/> </colgroup> <tr><tr><th>MachineName</th><th>Name</th><th>DisplayName</th><th>Status</th></tr> <tr>"
$stringtoreplace = "\s<\/table>\s<table>\s<colgroup>\s<col\/>\s<col\/>\s<col\/>\s<col\/>\s<\/colgroup>\s<tr><tr><th>MachineName<\/th><th>Name<\/th><th>DisplayName<\/th><th>Status<\/th><\/tr>\s<tr>"
$body = $body -replace($stringtoreplace,"")

I've already tried escaping the slashes & using \s where the spaces are, but still can't seem to get the string to match. I've also tried specifying that the $body variable is a string, but I can't seem to get this to work either.

Thanks in advance

 

[mikrom]

It worked for me

PS C:\> $body = "BEGIN </table> <table> <colgroup> <col/> <col/> <col/> <col/> </colgroup> <tr><tr><th>MachineName</th><th>Name</th><th>DisplayName</th><th>Status</th></tr> <tr>END"
PS C:\> $stringtoreplace = " </table> <table> <colgroup> <col/> <col/> <col/> <col/> </colgroup> <tr><tr><th>MachineName</th><th>Name</th><th>DisplayName</th><th>Status</th></tr> <tr>"
PS C:\> $body -replace $stringtoreplace, ""
BEGINEND
PS C:\>

 

[craigey]

I happened to do the same testing on the command line & found that the matching is working too, so it must have been the way or where in the script I was doing the replace. I've managed to overcome this now by writing out the file & then doing the replace & outputting that using set-content. I don't think it's the best way of doing it, but it worked. I've pasted the code below in case anyone can correct what I was doing (I've commented out the $body replace bit).

$ServerList = Get-Content -path C:\servers.txt
$serviceList = Get-Content -path C:\Services.txt
$OutputFile = C:\out.html

$body = $ServerList | foreach { (Get-Service -Name $serviceList -computername $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue ) | 
        Select-Object MachineName, Name, Status | ConvertTo-HTML -Fragment}

$colorTagTable = @{Stopped = ' bgcolor="#FE2E2E">Stopped<';
                   Running = ' bgcolor="#01DF01">Running<'}

$colorTagTable.Keys | foreach { $body = $body -replace ">$_<",($colorTagTable.$_) }

$string = " </table> <table> <colgroup> <col/> <col/> <col/> </colgroup> <tr><th>MachineName</th><th>Name</th><th>Status</th></tr> <tr>"

#$body = ($body -replace $string,"<tr>")
#write-host $body

ConvertTo-HTML -head $Style $Title -body "<font color =""#B40404""><H2>Service Status</H2>$body" | Out-File $OutputFile
(Get-Content $OutputFile) -replace $string,"<tr>" | Set-Content $OutputFile