Iterate through Hashtable containing List of values in Powershell - windows

Question

I am trying to print Keys and a list of values together in a single string in powershell.
I have something like this
List(dict(key:value)) (key= string , value=list<String>)
so my input is like this
dict(
"apple"=$list1
"banana"=$list2
"orange"=$list3)
$list1=#('red','green')
$list2=#('yellow','black')
$list3=#('orange')
Now I want output something like that:
$Final_ans= apple,red_green banana,yellow_black orange,orange
How can I do this in PowerShell? I am not able to iterate like this.
I tried few methods but it is giving me output System Collection.HashTable

Answer 1

Assuming you have a hashtable or dictionary where all keys are strings and the value entries are arrays of strings, like this:
$list1 = #('red','green')
$list2 = #('yellow','black')
$list3 = #('orange')
$hashtable = #{
"apple" = $list1
"banana" = $list2
"orange" = $list3
}
(#{} is PowerShell's native syntax for a hashtable (an unordered dictionary) literal.)
You can enumerate each key/value pair like this:
$hashtable.GetEnumerator() |ForEach-Object {
$_.Key # this will resolve to the key (ex. "apple")
$_.Value # this will resolve to the values (ex. #('red', 'green'))
}
So to construct a string like the one you describe, we can do something like this:
#($hashtable.GetEnumerator() |ForEach-Object {
$_.Key,($_.Value -join '_') -join ','
}) -join ' '
Here, we use the -join operator to concatenate the individual strings with different delimiters:
$_.Value -join '_' turns the value pairs (ex. #('red', 'green')) into a string like red_green
$_.Key,(...) -join ',' turns the key + string we created in the previous step into a string like apple,red_green
#(...) -join ' ' then turns all of those strings into one big space-separated string apple,red_green banana,yellow_black orange,orange