I'm using Get-EventLog to set a variable, and then setting another variable with the event ID description. I then use blat.exe to email this information to a group.
The description contains quotation marks. The quotation marks are causing blat to exit with error.
Is there a way to remove the quotes from the event.Message and replace them with a space or something?
If the variable is a String object then you can do the following:
$Variable.Replace("`"","") Depending on a case, it might be simpler to use Trim(Char[]) method:
...Removes all leading and trailing occurrences...
e.g. $your_variable.Trim('"') It will remove quotes only from start and end of $your_variable. It will keep any quotes, escaped or not, which are inside the text of $your_variable as they were:
PS C:\> $v.Trim('"') # where $v is: "hu""hu"hu'hu" hu""hu"hu'hu You can use Trim('"'), Trim("'"), but also both: Trim("`"'")
Note that Trim() does not care if a quote is orphaned, meaning that it will remove ending or starting quote regardless of it having or not a paired quote on the other side of the string.
PS C:\Users\Papo> $hu = "A: He asked `"whos this sofa?`" B: She replied: `"Chris'`"" PS C:\Users\Papo> $hu A: He asked "whos this sofa?" B: She replied: "Chris'" PS C:\Users\Papo> $hu.trim('"') A: He asked "whos this sofa?" B: She replied: "Chris' PS C:\Users\Papo> # and even worse: PS C:\Users\Papo> $hu.trim("'`"") A: He asked "whos this sofa?" B: She replied: "Chris 
I actually just got it. The number of quotes and double quotes was confusing me, but this has worked and blat did not error.
$var -replace '"', "" Those quotes are: single, double, single, comma, double, double.
$var -replace '"'.If you use Powershell's built-in send-mailmessage (2.0 required), you can eliminate your dependency on blat.exe and properly handle this issue without editing the description from the event log.
The problem is that a simple replace cleans out every quote character, even if escaped (doubled). Here are the functions I created for my use :
I also made them generic to manage other characters, with the optional $charToReplace parameter
#Replaces single occurrences of characters in a string. #Default is to replace single quotes Function RemoveNonEscapedChar { param( [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)][String] $param, [Parameter(Mandatory = $false)][String] $charToReplace ) if ($charToReplace -eq '') { $charToReplace = "'" } $cleanedString = "" $index = 0 $length = $param.length for ($index = 0; $index -lt $length; $index++) { $char = $param[$index] if ($char -eq $charToReplace) { if ($index +1 -lt $length -and $param[$index + 1] -eq $charToReplace) { $cleanedString += "$charToReplace$charToReplace" ++$index ## /!\ Manual increment of our loop counter to skip next char /!\ } continue } $cleanedString += $char } return $cleanedString } #A few test cases : RemoveNonEscapedChar("'st''r'''i''ng'") #Echoes st''r''i''ng RemoveNonEscapedChar("""st""""r""""""i""""ng""") -charToReplace '"' #Echoes st""r""i""ng RemoveNonEscapedChar("'st''r'''i''ng'") -charToReplace 'r' #Echoes 'st'''''i''ng' #Escapes single occurences of characters in a string. Double occurences are not escaped. e.g. ''' will become '''', NOT ''''''. #Default is to replace single quotes Function EscapeChar { param( [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)][String] $param, [Parameter(Mandatory = $false)][String] $charToEscape ) if ($charToEscape -eq '') { $charToEscape = "'" } $cleanedString = "" $index = 0 $length = $param.length for ($index = 0; $index -lt $length; $index++) { $char = $param[$index] if ($char -eq $charToEscape) { if ($index +1 -lt $length -and $param[$index + 1] -eq $charToEscape) { ++$index ## /!\ Manual increment of our loop counter to skip next char /!\ } $cleanedString += "$charToEscape$charToEscape" continue } $cleanedString += $char } return $cleanedString } #A few test cases : EscapeChar("'st''r'''i''ng'") #Echoes ''st''r''''i''ng'' EscapeChar("""st""""r""""""i""""ng""") -charToEscape '"' #Echoes ""st""r""""i""ng"" EscapeChar("'st''r'''i''ng'") -charToEscape 'r' #Echoes 'st''rr'''i''ng' None of the above answers worked for me. So I created the following solution...
Search and Replace the character single Quote "'" ascii Character (39) with a space " " ascii Character (32)
$strOldText = [char] 39 $strNewText = [char] 32 $Variable. = $Variable..Replace($strOldText, $strNewText).Trim() 
