How do i return true/false on get-content command for each username inside C:/Users?

Question

We want to eliminate the existence of a bad config file we've identified (and also have the manual fix for) from within every users appdata folder. The config file only exists here and there and not within every user. So I am trying to piece together a script that will return true/false if specified text is matched with get-content on config.xml. I want to run this against each user profile on every machine and output results to csv.

So far I've run into an issue. Still learning powershell so any help much appreciated.

$Users = "C:\Users"
$x = "This is the text I'm looking for"


Foreach ($Username in $Users)

{
$Path = "$Users\$Username\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml"
$y = Get-Content -Path $Path
If ($y -match $x)

{
    "true"

}
else 
{
    "false"
}
}

As you can see i haven't gotten round to the csv part yet because I'm not able to get the correct path to generate for get-content.

Rather than having the correct path which I hoped as the foreach loop worked it's way through would be:

"C:\Users\Username1\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml"
"C:\Users\Username2\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml"
"C:\Users\Username3\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml"

I am instead getting the following error:

Get-Content : Cannot find path 'C:\Users\C:\Users\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml' because it does not exist.
At C:\Users\mastaxx\Desktop\test.ps1:9 char:6
+ $y = Get-Content -Path $Path
+      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (C:\Users\C:\Use...ings\Config.xml:String) [Get-Content], ItemNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PathNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetContentCommand

My seemingly silly assumption here is that $Users would be "C:\Users" (which i believe it is because I've defined it) and $Username would be "Username1" (which clearly it is not). Instead I can see it's also "C:\Users" in this case, making the path being constructed to be this incorrect one:

C:\Users\C:\Users\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml

I expected the foreach loop to treat each folder inside $Users as an individual object and become the $Username in each loop instance, allowing me to insert it into the config file $path like so:

$Users   $Username
  ↓          ↓
C:\Users\Username1\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml

I'm not entirely sure what i'm doing wrong but i know I'm definitely doing something silly here. Would very much appreciate anyone with better PS skills to help point it out?

Answer 1

I've managed to work out that i was missing Get-Childitem in the equation.

This is the correct way to do it, although I'm sure my PS is in need of major improvement, as I was unable to get a properly formatted CSV to export so I opted for the messy approach which was to output an individual CSV for each instance of true, but at least it works!

$computers = Get-Content -Path "C:\computers.txt"



foreach ($comp in $computers) {

$i = "\\$comp\C$\Users\"
$AppData = "\AppData\Local\MyApp\Settings\Config.xml"
$text = "Text I'm Looking For*"



Get-ChildItem -Path $i
Foreach ($folder in Get-Childitem $i)
{

$ReadConfig = Get-Content -Path "$i$folder$AppData"
If ($ReadConfig -match $text)

{
  
  out-file "c:\results\$comp $folder.csv"
  
}
else 
{
    "false"
}
}
}