Multi value arrays in PowerShell: How to create them really easy

Hello together, in my latest activity as an consutlant I encountered following issue: I got a objects with two meta data. In my example it was a milestone with an link to the milestone activity. Since it were more than 30 items, I didn’t want to work with PSObjects. I was searching for a solution to create multi value arrays in PowerShell with little code as possible. If I would work with PSObjects, it would blow up my code. In this article, I will show you how you can create “normal” arrays and also how you can enhance this arrays, to multi value arrays in PowerShell.

Table of Contents

Create Standard PowerShell Arrays in PowerShell

A standard array is set up like this:

$array = @("Value1","Value2")

You can also write it like this:

$Array = @( 
    "Value1"
    "Value2"
)

So you can get the single values, by putting in the index number of it in square brackets – like $Array[0] for the first value and $Array[1] for the second value. With [-1] you can get the last value of the array.

Add Value to Standard PowerShell Arrays

You can add new lines in the array like this:

$Array.Add("Value3")

Remove Value from Standard PowerShell Arrays

You can remove the lines of an array like this:

$Array.Remove("Value2")

Create multi value arrays in PowerShell

Displayname	Link
Microsoft	https://microsoft.com
SPOScripts	https://sposcripts.com
Azure Portal	https://portal.azure.com
ZMYLER	https://zmyler.com

For creating a multi value arrays in PowerShell, we have to inject a hashtable to each array line.

A hashtable looks like this:

@{KEY="VALUE"; KEY2 = "VALUE2"; KEYn = "VALUEn"}

So your multi value arrays will look like this:

$Array = @( 
    @{ Key1=("Value1"); Key2=("Value2")}
    @{ Key1=("Value3") ;Key2=("Value4")}
)

For my example it looks like this:

$Array = @( 
    @{ Displayname=("Microsoft"); Link=("https://microsoft.com")}
    @{ Displayname=("Google"); Link=("https://google.com")}
    @{ Displayname=("Azure Portal"); Link=("https://portal.azure.com")}
    @{ Displayname=("ZMYLER"); Link=("https://zmyler.com")}
)

As you can see, you can also get the single values of each line in array:

Add Value to mutli value Arrays in PowerShell

You can add a value to a multi value array in PowerShell like this:

$Array.Add( @{ Displayname=("Ad-equum"); Link=("https://www.ad-equum.de/")} )

Add value to mutli value arrays in PowerShell

Remove Value from multi value arrays in PowerShell

Removing a value from a multi value arrays in PowerShell is more complicated. You have to redefine the array, by filtering out the value, which you don’t want in your array:

$Array = $Array | Where-Object {$_.displayname -ne "Ad-equum"}

Conclusio

If you want to create a multi value arrays in PowerShell, the only thing you have to do is to inject a hashtable to each line. I hope, that I have saved you a ton of work 🙂