PowerShell: extract timestamp from string

Question

I am brand new to PowerShell and have figured out how to extract a relevant line from a log file:

C:\Documents and Settings\admin\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\SyncToy\2.0\SyncToyLog.log:325:SYNC: 05/22/2012 14:54:55:857: SyncToy run of Profile Backup (C:\Documents and Settings\admin\, H:\Sync\) completed at 5:22/2012 2:54:55 PM.

What I would like to do is extract the first timestamp sans milliseconds (the one that uses 24 hour time) to a variable. Result:

05/22/2012 14:54:55

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Answer 1

One way would be to parse out the date/time string with a regular expression and then convert it to a date/time object:

$line = 'C:\Documents and Settings\admin\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\SyncToy\2.0\SyncToyLog.log:325:SYNC: 05/22/2012 14:54:55:857: SyncToy run of Profile Backup (C:\Documents and Settings\admin\, H:\Sync\) completed at 5:22/2012 2:54:55 PM.'

$dateTimeString = [regex]::Matches($line, '(\d\d/\d\d/\d\d\d\d.+): ')[0].Groups[1].Value

Then convert it to a datetime object:

$provider = New-Object System.Globalization.CultureInfo "en-US"

$dateTime = [datetime]::ParseExact($dateTimeString, 'MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss:fff', $provider)

Now you can display it or store it in a variable however you want:

$dateTime -f 'MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss'