Foreach Loop in PowerShell Not in Order

Question

I am working with a config file for PowerShell and every time I call a foreach loop to grab the data it grabs it in the wrong order. See below:

config.ini

[queries]

query01=stuff1

query02=stuff2

query03=stuff3

query04=stuff4

The foreach loop:

#Loads an INI file data into a variable
$iniContent = Get-IniContent 'config.ini'
#grabs the hashtable for the data under the [queries] section
$queries = $iniContent['queries']

foreach($query in $queries.GetEnumerator())
{
    write-host $query.name
}

I get the following output:

stuff1
stuff4
stuff2
stuff3

I am assuming this has something to do with asynchronous processing from PowerShell, but what would be the best way to handle the queries from the config.ini file in the order I store them in there?

Note: I added the number to the end of the query (query01) just for testing purposes. The queries will not have them in my final config.ini.

EDIT:

Get-IniContent function:

function Get-IniContent ($filePath)
{
    $ini = @{}
    switch -regex -file $FilePath
    {
        “^\[(.+)\]” # Section
        {
            $section = $matches[1]
            $ini[$section] = @{}
            $CommentCount = 0
        }
        “(.+?)\s*=(.*)” # Key
        {
            $name,$value = $matches[1..2]
            $ini[$section][$name] = $value
        }
    }
    return $ini
}

Answer 1

You need to change both hashtable declarations to ordered dictionaries. If you only change

$ini = @{}

to

$ini = [ordered]@{}

your $ini is now an ordered dictionay but the nested hashtable created at

$ini[$section] = @{}

is still an unordered hashtable. You would need to change both of them to ordered dictionaries.

function Get-IniContent ($filePath)
{
  $ini = [ordered]@{}
  switch -regex -file $FilePath
  {
    “^\[(.+)\]” # Section
    {
        $section = $matches[1]
        $ini[$section] = [ordered]@{}
        $CommentCount = 0
    }
    “(.+?)\s*=(.*)” # Key
    {
        $name,$value = $matches[1..2]
        $ini[$section][$name] = $value
    }
  }
  return $ini
}

EDIT

There is also a ConvertTo-OrderedDictionary script on the Script Center that allows you to convert hashtables and arrays to ordered dictionaries if you don't want to rewrite your function.