about_For
Short description
Describes a language command you can use to run statements based on a conditional test.
Long description
The For statement (also known as a For loop) is a language construct you
can use to create a loop that runs commands in a command block while a
specified condition evaluates to $true.
A typical use of the For loop is to iterate an array of values and to operate
on a subset of these values. In most cases, if you want to iterate all the
values in an array, consider using a Foreach statement.
Syntax
The following shows the For statement syntax.
for (<Init>; <Condition>; <Repeat>)
{
<Statement list>
}
The Init placeholder represents one or more commands that are run before the loop begins. You typically use the Init portion of the statement to create and initialize a variable with a starting value.
This variable will then be the basis for the condition to be tested in the next
portion of the For statement.
The Condition placeholder represents the portion of the For statement
that resolves to a $true or $false Boolean value. PowerShell evaluates
the condition each time the For loop runs. If the statement is $true, the
commands in the command block run, and the statement is evaluated again. If the
condition is still $true, the commands in the Statement list run again.
The loop is repeated until the condition becomes $false.
The Repeat placeholder represents one or more commands, separated by commas, that are executed each time the loop repeats. Typically, this is used to modify a variable that is tested inside the Condition part of the statement.
The Statement list placeholder represents a set of one or more commands that are run each time the loop is entered or repeated. The contents of the Statement list are surrounded by braces.
Support for multiple operations
The following syntaxes are supported for multiple assignment operations in the Init statement:
# Comma separated assignment expressions enclosed in parentheses.
for (($i = 0), ($j = 0); $i -lt 10; $i++)
{
"`$i:$i"
"`$j:$j"
}
# Sub-expression using the semicolon to separate statements.
for ($($i = 0;$j = 0); $i -lt 10; $i++)
{
"`$i:$i"
"`$j:$j"
}
The following syntaxes are supported for multiple assignment operations in the Repeat statement:
# Comma separated assignment expressions.
for (($i = 0), ($j = 0); $i -lt 10; $i++, $j++)
{
"`$i:$i"
"`$j:$j"
}
# Comma separated assignment expressions enclosed in parentheses.
for (($i = 0), ($j = 0); $i -lt 10; ($i++), ($j++))
{
"`$i:$i"
"`$j:$j"
}
# Sub-expression using the semicolon to separate statements.
for ($($i = 0;$j = 0); $i -lt 10; $($i++;$j++))
{
"`$i:$i"
"`$j:$j"
}
Note
Operations other than pre or post increment may not work with all syntaxes.
For multiple Conditions use logical operators as demonstrated by the following example.
for (($i = 0), ($j = 0); $i -lt 10 -and $j -lt 10; $i++,$j++)
{
"`$i:$i"
"`$j:$j"
}
For more information, see about_Logical_Operators.
Syntax examples
At a minimum, a For statement requires the parenthesis surrounding the
Init, Condition, and Repeat part of the statement and a command
surrounded by braces in the Statement list part of the statement.
Note that the upcoming examples intentionally show code outside the For
statement. In later examples, code is integrated into the For statement.
For example, the following For statement continually displays the value of
the $i variable until you manually break out of the command by pressing
CTRL+C.
$i = 1
for (;;)
{
Write-Host $i
}
You can add additional commands to the statement list so that the value of $i
is incremented by 1 each time the loop is run, as the following example shows.
for (;;)
{
$i++; Write-Host $i
}
Until you break out of the command by pressing CTRL+C, this statement will
continually display the value of the $i variable as it is incremented by 1
each time the loop is run.
Rather than change the value of the variable in the statement list part of the
For statement, you can use the Repeat portion of the For statement
instead, as follows.
$i=1
for (;;$i++)
{
Write-Host $i
}
This statement will still repeat indefinitely until you break out of the command by pressing CTRL+C.
You can terminate the For loop using a condition. You can place a
condition using the Condition portion of the For statement. The For
loop terminates when the condition evaluates to $false.
In the following example, the For loop runs while the value of $i is less
than or equal to 10.
$i=1
for(;$i -le 10;$i++)
{
Write-Host $i
}
Instead of creating and initializing the variable outside the For statement,
you can perform this task inside the For loop by using the Init portion
of the For statement.
for($i=1; $i -le 10; $i++){Write-Host $i}
You can use carriage returns instead of semicolons to delimit the Init,
Condition, and Repeat portions of the For statement. The following
example shows a For that uses this alternative syntax.
for ($i = 0
$i -lt 10
$i++){
$i
}
This alternative form of the For statement works in PowerShell script files
and at the PowerShell command prompt. However, it is easier to use the For
statement syntax with semicolons when you enter interactive commands at the
command prompt.
The For loop is more flexible than the Foreach loop because it allows you
to increment values in an array or collection by using patterns. In the
following example, the $i variable is incremented by 2 in the Repeat
portion of the For statement.
for ($i = 0; $i -le 20; $i += 2)
{
Write-Host $i
}
The For loop can also be written on one line as in the following example.
for ($i = 0; $i -lt 10; $i++) { Write-Host $i }
Functional example
The following example demonstrates how you can use a For loop to iterate over
an array of files and rename them. The files in the work_items folder have
their work item ID as the filename. The loop iterates through the files
to ensure that the ID number is zero-padded to five digits.
First, the code retrieves the list of work item data files. They're all JSON
files that use the format <work-item-type>-<work-item-number> for their name.
With the file info objects saved to the $fileList variable, you can sort them
by name and see that while items are grouped by type, the ordering of the items
by ID is unexpected.
$fileList = Get-ChildItem -Path ./work_items
$fileList | Sort-Object -Descending -Property Name
bug-219.json
bug-41.json
bug-500.json
bug-697.json
bug-819.json
bug-840.json
feat-176.json
feat-367.json
feat-373.json
feat-434.json
feat-676.json
feat-690.json
feat-880.json
feat-944.json
maint-103.json
maint-367.json
maint-454.json
maint-49.json
maint-562.json
maint-579.json
To ensure that you can sort the work items alphanumerically, the work item numbers need to be zero-padded.
The code does this by first searching for the work item with the longest
numerical suffix. It loops over the files using a for loop, using the index
to access each file in the array. It compares each filename to a regular
expression pattern to extract the work item number as a string instead of an
integer. Then it compares the lengths of the work item numbers to find the
longest number.
# Default the longest numeral count to 1, since it can't be smaller.
$longestNumeralCount = 1
# Regular expression to find the numerals in the filename - use a template
# to simplify updating the pattern as needed.
$patternTemplate = '-(?<WorkItemNumber>{{{0},{1}}})\.json'
$pattern = $patternTemplate -f $longestNumeralCount
# Iterate, checking the length of the work item number as a string.
for (
$i = 0 # Start at zero for first array item.
$i -lt $fileList.Count # Stop on the last item in the array.
$i++ # Increment by one to step through the array.
) {
if ($fileList[$i].Name -match $pattern) {
$numeralCount = $Matches.WorkItemNumber.Length
if ($numeralCount -gt $longestNumeralCount) {
# Count is higher, check against it for remaining items.
$longestNumeralCount = $numeralCount
# Update the pattern to speed up the search, ignoring items
# with a smaller numeral count using pattern matching.
$pattern = $patternTemplate -f $longestNumeralCount
}
}
}
Now that you know the maximum numeral count for the work items, you can loop over the files to rename them as needed. The next snippet of code iterates over the file list again, padding them as needed. It uses another regular expression pattern to only process files with a numeral count smaller than the maximum.
# Regular expression to find the numerals in the filename, but only if the
# numeral count is smaller than the longest numeral count.
$pattern = $patternTemplate -f 1, ($longestNumeralCount - 1)
for (
$i = 0 # Start at zero for first array item.
$i -lt $fileList.Count # Stop on the last item in the array.
$i++ # Increment by one to step through the array.
) {
# Get the file from the array to process
$file = $fileList[$i]
# If the file doesn't need to be renamed, continue to the next file
if ($file.Name -notmatch $pattern) {
continue
}
# Get the work item number from the regular expression, create the
# padded string from it, and define the new filename by replacing
# the original number string with the padded number string.
$workItemNumber = $Matches.WorkItemNumber
$paddedNumber = "{0:d$longestNumeralCount}" -f $workItemNumber
$paddedName = $file.Name -replace $workItemNumber, $paddedNumber
# Rename the file with the padded work item number.
$file | Rename-Item -NewName $paddedName
}
Now that the files are renamed, you can retrieve the list of files again and
sort both the old and new files by name. The following snippet retrieves a
the files again to save in a new array and compare with the initial set of
objects. Then it sorts both arrays of files, saving the sorted arrays into
the new variables $sortedOriginal and $sortedPadded. Finally, it uses a
for loop to iterate over the arrays and output an object with the following
properties:
- Index represents the current index in the sorted arrays.
- Original is the item in the sorted array of original filenames at the current index.
- Padded is the item in the sorted array of padded filenames at the current index.
$paddedList = Get-ChildItem -path ./work_items
# Sort both file lists by name.
$sortedOriginal = $fileList | Sort-Object -Property Name
$sortedPadded = $renamedList | Sort-Object -Property Name
# Iterate over the arrays and output an object to simplify comparing how
# the arrays were sorted before and after padding the work item numbers.
for (
$i = 0
$i -lt $fileList.Count
$i++
) {
[pscustomobject] @{
Index = $i
Original = $sortedOriginal[$i].Name
Padded = $sortedPadded[$i].Name
}
}
Index Original Padded
----- -------- ------
0 bug-219.json bug-00041.json
1 bug-41.json bug-00219.json
2 bug-500.json bug-00500.json
3 bug-697.json bug-00697.json
4 bug-819.json bug-00819.json
5 bug-840.json bug-00840.json
6 feat-176.json feat-00176.json
7 feat-367.json feat-00367.json
8 feat-373.json feat-00373.json
9 feat-434.json feat-00434.json
10 feat-676.json feat-00676.json
11 feat-690.json feat-00690.json
12 feat-880.json feat-00880.json
13 feat-944.json feat-00944.json
14 maint-103.json maint-00049.json
15 maint-367.json maint-00103.json
16 maint-454.json maint-00367.json
17 maint-49.json maint-00454.json
18 maint-562.json maint-00562.json
19 maint-579.json maint-00579.json
In the output, the sorted work items after padding are in the expected order.
