Powershell – HBA card status

Figured it out myself. Because Powershell works with .net objects rather than text, you need to use get-content to expose the contents of the text files. So to perform what I was trying to do in the question, use:

compare-object (get-content one.txt) (get-content two.txt)

While unsuccessfully searching for a config file or registry setting that might contain the log directory path, I stumbled upon a registry key that contains the installation path of the Tomcat app itself, and combined with the knowledge that the log folder I'm after is in a subfolder of that, named logs, I have enough information for my script to create the logging path.

This registry key is going to be in a predictable location in the registry, and the "InstallPath" name/property is unique within that location, so I can simply do a recursive search and match "InstallPath" to extract the installation folder for Tomcat, and append \logs to get my logging folder.

After adding a basic error handling check, that looks like:

$FoundRegKey = $null
$ApacheRegKeyExists = (Test-Path "HKLM:\Software\Apache Software Foundation")

If ($ApacheRegKeyExists)
{
    Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\Software\Apache Software Foundation" -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | 
    ForEach-Object
    {
        If ($_.Property -match "InstallPath") 
        {$FoundRegKey = Get-ItemProperty $_.pspath | Select InstallPath}
    }
}
Else
{
    Write-Host "Can't find Tomcat software keys in registry, exiting."
    Exit
}

If ($FoundRegKey)
    {
    $logfolder=($FoundRegKey.InstallPath+"\logs")
    }
Else
    {
    Write-Host "Can't find Tomcat install path in registry, exiting."
    Exit
    }