Strange result from String.Split()

Question

Why does the following result in an array with 7 elements with 5 blank? I\'d expect only 2 elements. Where are the 5 blank elements coming from?

$a = \'OU=RA         


        

Answer 1

It splits the string for each character in the separator. So its splitting it on 'O', 'U' & '='.

As @mklement0 has commented, my earlier answer would not work in all cases. So here is an alternate way to get the expected items.

$a.Split(',') |% { $_.Split('=') |? { $_ -ne 'OU' } }

This code will split the string, first on , then each item will be split on = and ignore the items that are OU, eventually returning the expected values:

RAH
RAC

This will work even in case of:

$a = 'OU=FOO,OU=RAH,OU=RAC'

generating 3 items FOO, RAH & RAC

To get only 2 string as expected you could use following line: $a.Split('OU=', [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries) Which will give output as: RAH, RAC And if you use (note the comma in the separator) $a.Split(',OU=', [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries) you will get RAH RAC

This is probably what you want. :)