Select file on Import-Csv

Question

The code below is part of a switch and it\'s working fine, but the problem is: I need to change my file name to 15... Is it possible to to change it so that when I start it,

Answer 1

The simplest solution is to make your script accept the target file as an argument, by declaring a parameter:

param(
  # Declare a mandatory parameter to which the file path of the CSV
  # file to import must be passed as an argument on invocation.
  [Parameter(Mandatory)]
  [string] $FilePath
)

$names = Import-Csv $FilePath -Header Givenname,Surname -Delimiter ";"
foreach ($Name in $Names) {
    $FirstFilter = $Name.Givenname
    $SecondFilter = $Name.Surname
    Get-ADUser -Filter {GivenName -like $FirstFilter -and Surname -like $SecondFilter} |
        select Enabled, SamAccountName, DistinguishedName,
            @{n="ou";e={($_.DistinguishedName -split ",*..=")[2]}} |
        Export-Csv .\sam.csv -NoTypeInformation -Append
}

If you invoke your script without a file path, you will be prompted for it; let's assume your script is located in the current dir. and its name is someScript.ps1:

./someScript    # invocation with no argument prompts for a value for $FilePath

Unfortunately, such an automatic prompt is not user-friendly and offers no tab completion.

However, on the command line PowerShell's tab completion defaults to completing file and directory names in the current location, so that:

./someScript 

cycles through all files and directories in the current folder.

You can even type a wildcard expression and tab-complete that, if you don't know the full filename or don't want to type it in full:

./someScript *.csv

This will cycle through all *.csv files in the current dir. only.

If you want to go even further and customize tab completion to only cycle through *.csv files, you can use an [ArgumentCompleter({ ... })] attribute (PSv5+):

param(
  [Parameter(Mandatory)]
  # Implement custom tab-completion based on only the *.csv files in the current dir.  
  [ArgumentCompleter({
    param($cmd, $param, $wordToComplete)
    Get-ChildItem -Name "$wordToComplete*.csv"
  })]
  [string] $FilePath
)

# ...

Now,

./someScript 

will cycle only through the *.csv files in the current directory, if any.

Caveat: As of PowerShell 7.0, tab-completing an argument for which the ArgumentCompleter script block returns no matches (in this case, with no *.csv files present) unexpectedly falls back to the default file- and directory-name completion - see this GitHub issue.

Similarly,

./someScript 1

will cycle only through the *.csv files in the current directory whose name starts with 1, if any.

---

As an alternative to using an attribute as part of a script's / function's definition, you can use the PSv5+ Register-ArgumentCompleter cmdlet to attach tab completions to the parameters of any command, i.e., including preexisting ones.

---

In PSv4- you have two (cumbersome) options for custom tab completion:

• Use a dynamic parameter with a dynamically constructed [ValidateSet()] attribute - see the link in Rohin Sidharth's answer.

• Customize the tabexpansion2 (PSv3, PSv4) / tabexpansion (PSv1, PSv2) function, but be sure not to accidentally replace existing functionality.