How to find the average time from an array in PowerShell

Question

I am referencing a list which has a lot of data in the form of the elapsed time of a process and I'm trying to convert it to a format where I can find the average amount of elapsed time.

The data looks something like this:

ElapsedTime
0 hours, 1 minutes, 14 seconds
0 hours, 16 minutes, 2 seconds
0 hours, 4 minutes, 0 seconds
0 hours, 11 minutes, 59 seconds

So I have the above data Imported into a variable and extract the numerical data using this formula:

$ElapsedHours, $ElapsedMinutes, $ElapsedSeconds = $TimeElapsed -split ', ' -split ' ' | Select -Index 0,2,4

From there I assign the values to a variable and an instance of New-TimeSpan:

$ElapsedTimeSpanObject = New-TimeSpan -Hours $ElapsedHours -Minutes $ElapsedMinutes -Seconds -$ElapsedSeconds

This is the part that gets tricky for me. The two above examples of code are all taking place within a Foreach loop and I've already created a blank array. After the timespan object is created, it is inserted into the array and looks at the next ElapsedTime value.

I want to find the average of the total array.

When I execute the current code I have for trying to find the Average I get an error. Here is the code I'm using:

$ElapsedTimespanCollection | Measure-Object -Average

Executing the above code gives me this error for each object in the array:

Measure-Object : Input object "00:02:44" is not numeric. At line:1 char:30 + $ElapsedTimespanCollection | Measure-Object -Average + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : InvalidType: (00:02:44:TimeSpan) [Measure-Object], PSInvalidOperationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NonNumericInputObject,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.MeasureObjectCommand

So how do I go about converting or formatting these measurements of time into something I can check against for their average?

Answer 1

You can use TimeSpan to convert the data to a valid time type and then use the .TotalSeconds property to convert the hh:mm:ss string to a time format you can then get numeric total seconds, etc. There are additional methods and properties you should be able to utilize here to help.

$ElapsedHours, $ElapsedMinutes, $ElapsedSeconds = $TimeElapsed -split ', ' -split ' ' | Select -Index 0,2,4
$ElapsedTimeSpanObject = New-TimeSpan -Hours $ElapsedHours -Minutes $ElapsedMinutes -Seconds -$ElapsedSeconds

## -- $ElapsedTimespanCollection = "00:02:44"
$ElapsedTimespanCollection = [TimeSpan]$ElapsedTimespanCollection 
$ElapsedTime.TotalSeconds

---

Further Resources

• TimeSpan Structure

  Properties

  • Seconds: Gets the seconds component of the time interval represented by the current TimeSpan structure.

  ---

  Methods

  • Duration(): Returns a new TimeSpan object whose value is the absolute value of the current TimeSpan object.

Answer 2

This script uses a RegEx with (capture groups) to extract hours, minuts and seconds from an inline csv with a here string. It creates a PSCustomObject from all the time data

## Q:\Test\2018\07\03\SU_1336282.ps1
$TimeLapsed = @"
ElapsedTime
0 hours, 1 minutes, 14 seconds
0 hours, 16 minutes, 2 seconds
0 hours, 4 minutes, 0 seconds
0 hours, 11 minutes, 59 seconds
"@ | ConvertFrom-Csv -Delimiter '|'

$Elapsed = ForEach($row in $TimeLapsed) {
    if ($row -match '(?<HH>\d+) hours, (?<mm>\d+) minutes, (?<ss>\d+) seconds'){
        $TotalSecs = (3600 * $Matches.HH) +
                     (  60 * $Matches.mm) +
                        [int]$Matches.ss
        [PSCustomObject]@{
            Hour     = [int]$Matches.HH
            Minute   = [int]$Matches.mm
            Seconds  = [int]$Matches.ss
            TotalSecs= $TotalSecs
        }
    }
}
$Elapsed
$Elapsed | Measure TotalSecs -Average -Sum -MAx -Min|ft *

Sample output:

> .\SU_1336282.ps1

Hour Minute Seconds TotalSecs
---- ------ ------- ---------
   0      1      14        74
   0     16       2       962
   0      4       0       240
   0     11      59       719



Count Average  Sum Maximum Minimum Property
----- -------  --- ------- ------- --------
    4  498,75 1995     962      74 TotalSecs