LogParser vs. PowerShell

The following article popped-up this morning about How to extract NETBIOS name from BADMIF files on ConfigMgr 2012 using Log Parser 2.2

Hey, why would I need the old school log parser from 2005 when we have PowerShell nowadays and then another tool to manipulate the data output?

You can actually achieve this task with a PowerShell one-liner and even without having to manipulate the output.

Get-ChildItem -Path "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\inboxes\auth\dataldr.box\BADMIFS" -Include *.MIF -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | ForEach-Object { 
    try {
        (
            Get-Content -ReadCount 1 -TotalCount 6 -Path $_.FullName -ErrorAction Stop  | 
            Select-String -Pattern "//KeyAttribute<NetBIOS\sName><(?<ComputerName>.*)>" -ErrorAction Stop 
        ).Matches.Groups[-1].Value 
    } catch {
        Write-Warning -Message "Failed" 
    }
}

If you’ve got warnings, you may also want to investigate which files caused it.
In this case, I propose the following modification of the above code to be able to catch these files.

$ConfigMgrBoxPath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Configuration Manager\inboxes\auth\dataldr.box\BADMIFS"
Get-ChildItem -Path $ConfigMgrBoxPath -Include *.MIF -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | ForEach-Object { 
    $File = $_.FullName ;
    try {
        (
            Get-Content -ReadCount 1 -TotalCount 6 -Path $_.FullName -ErrorAction Stop  | 
            Select-String -Pattern "//KeyAttribute<NetBIOS\sName><(?<ComputerName>.*)>" -ErrorAction Stop 
        ).Matches.Groups[-1].Value 
    } catch {
        Write-Warning -Message "Failed for $File" 
    }
}

PowerShell rocks, no doubt! 😎