Hash tables (dictionaries) in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Working with Hash Tables (Dictionaries) in PowerShell

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small store's inventory. You want to keep track of product names and their quantities using a hash table in PowerShell.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that creates a hash table for products and quantities, sets a minimum stock threshold, filters products below that threshold, and displays those products.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a hash table named inventory with exact product names and quantities

Create a variable named minStock with a numeric value

Use a foreach loop to find products with quantity less than minStock

Store filtered products in a new hash table named lowStock

Print the lowStock hash table at the end

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Managing inventory levels in small businesses or stores to know when to reorder products.

💼 Career

PowerShell scripting for system administrators or IT professionals automating inventory or configuration tasks.

1

Create the inventory hash table

Create a hash table called inventory with these exact entries: 'Apples' = 30, 'Bananas' = 12, 'Oranges' = 20, 'Grapes' = 5

PowerShell

# Create the inventory hash table
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use @{} to create a hash table in PowerShell. Separate entries with semicolons.

2

Set the minimum stock threshold

Create a variable called minStock and set it to 15

PowerShell

$inventory = @{ 'Apples' = 30; 'Bananas' = 12; 'Oranges' = 20; 'Grapes' = 5 }
# Set the minimum stock threshold
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 15 to the variable minStock.

3

Find products with low stock

Create an empty hash table called lowStock. Use a foreach loop with variables product and quantity to iterate over $inventory.GetEnumerator(). Inside the loop, if quantity is less than minStock, add the product and quantity to lowStock.

PowerShell

$inventory = @{ 'Apples' = 30; 'Bananas' = 12; 'Oranges' = 20; 'Grapes' = 5 }
$minStock = 15
# Create lowStock hash table and fill it with products below minStock
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use $inventory.GetEnumerator() to loop through the hash table. Use $lowStock[$product] = $quantity to add entries.

4

Display the low stock products

Print the lowStock hash table using Write-Output

PowerShell

$inventory = @{ 'Apples' = 30; 'Bananas' = 12; 'Oranges' = 20; 'Grapes' = 5 }
$minStock = 15
$lowStock = @{}
foreach ($item in $inventory.GetEnumerator()) {
    $product = $item.Key
    $quantity = $item.Value
    if ($quantity -lt $minStock) {
        $lowStock[$product] = $quantity
    }
}
# Print the lowStock hash table
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Write-Output $lowStock to display the hash table.