The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

I’ve learned the hard way that both .NET and PowerShell version information isn’t always accurate or usable for two reasons which I later found in various other blog and forum posts:

• The [WayBack] FileVersion or [WayBack] ProductVersion properties of a [WayBack] FileVersionInfo Class (System.Diagnostics) are both strings, so do not always contain a set of four dot-separated numbers
• The accurate numbers are in these properties in the right order that have the correct information in integer typed properties:
  • [WayBack] FileMajorPart
  • [WayBack] FileMinorPart
  • [WayBack] FileBuildPart
  • [WayBack] FilePrivatePart
  • [WayBack] ProductMajorPart
  • [WayBack] ProductMinorPart
  • [WayBack] ProductBuildPart
  • [WayBack] ProductPrivatePart
• Both FileVersion and ProductVersion are sometimes obtained from the MUI ([WayBack] Multilingual User Interface – Wikipedia) which isn’t always updated when the PE file is. However, the integer typed properties are.

The easiest is to use these numbers to create a [WayBack] Version Class (System) instance using the [WayBack] Version Constructor (Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32) constructor. This has the added benefit that you directly compare versions with each other.

Sometimes it makes even sense to take the highest version from Product and File.

In PowerShell, this is the way to do that, assuming $imagePath points to a [WayBack] Portable Executable:

try {
  $VersionInfo = (Get-Item $imagePath).VersionInfo
  $FileVersion = [version]("{0}.{1}.{2}.{3}" -f $VersionInfo.FileMajorPart, $VersionInfo.FileMinorPart, $VersionInfo.FileBuildPart, $VersionInfo.FilePrivatePart)
  $ProductVersion = [version]("{0}.{1}.{2}.{3}" -f $VersionInfo.ProductMajorPart, $VersionInfo.ProductMinorPart, $VersionInfo.ProductBuildPart, $VersionInfo.ProductPrivatePart)
  $ActualVersion = $(if ($ProductVersion -gt $FileVersion) { $ProductVersion } else { $FileVersion })
}
catch {
  $ActualVersion = [version]("0.0.0.0")
}

Background information:

• [WayBack] winapi – GetFileVersionInfo() returns wrong file’s version information – Stack Overflow
• [WayBack] Getting Accurate File Versions | Rohn’s Blog
• [WayBack] Why doesn’t the File Version match up correctly when I use Get-ItemProperty?
• [WayBack] How to (correctly) check file versions with PowerShell | Ask Premier Field Engineering (PFE) Platforms

–jeroen

I like this built-in construct by fbehrens most:

$result = If ($condition) {"true"} Else {"false"}

Everything else is incidental complexity and thus to be avoided.

For use in or as an expression, not just an assignment, wrap it in $(), thus:

write-host $(If ($condition) {"true"} Else {"false"})

There are even more elegant constructs, but those require setting up an alias before using them.

Source: [WayBack] Ternary operator in PowerShell – Stack Overflow

–jeroen

Cool tip by mjolinor to execute the scripts 1.ps1, 2.ps1 and 3.ps1 from a master.ps1 script in the same directory:

&"$PSScriptroot\1.ps1"
&"$PSScriptroot\2.ps1"
&"$PSScriptroot\3.ps1"

Source: [WayBack] scripting – Run Multiple Powershell Scripts Sequentially – on a Folder – Combine Scripts into a Master Script – Stack Overflow.

It uses $PSScriptroot which got introduced in PowerShell 2 in modules and extended in PowerShell 3 to be available in all scripts. More information in [WayBack] about_Automatic_Variables | Microsoft Docs

–jeroen