Parse Command Outputting Horizontally - parsing

Question

I have a script that parses a log file for the last 15 lines but it outputs the data in a horizontal line which I think interferes when I try to get an average of the numbers in the file.
Here's an example of the log file I'm parsing:
3/22/2016 9:11:21 AM 44.0
3/22/2016 9:11:22 AM 44.1
3/22/2016 9:11:23 AM 44.2
3/22/2016 9:11:24 AM 44.3
And here's my PowerShell command that parses the last 15 lines of the active log file.
$regexNUM = '\d+\.\d+'
$NUMLog = Get-ChildItem -Path 'C:\Users\Admin\Documents' |
Where-Object {$_.Name -match "LOGFILE"} |
Sort LastWriteTime | Select -Last 1
$NUMBERS = Get-Content -Path "C:\Users\Admin\Documents\$NumLog" -Tail 15 |
Select-String -Pattern $regexNum -AllMatches |
% { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Groups }
When I do a Write-Host $NUMBERS it outputs the data like this:
39.5 39.6 39.7 39.8 39.9 40.0 40.1 40.2 40.3 40.4 40.5 40.6 40.7 40.8 40.9
And here's how I'm trying to get the average of these 15 numbers:
$Average = $NUMBERS | Measure-Object -Average | Select Average
When I do Write-Host $Average it says:
Measure-Object : Input object "39.5" is not numeric.
At C:\Users\Admin\Documents\SampleTest.ps1:26 char:30
+ $Average = $NUMBERS | Measure-Object -Average | Select Average
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidType: (39.5:Match) [Measure-Object], PSInvalidOperationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : NonNumericInputObject,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.MeasureObjectCommand
I'm not sure why it would say the number 39.5 is not numeric but all I can assume is that it doesn't like it being horizontal with the spaces maybe. It throws one of those errors for each of the 15 numbers too.

Answer 1

Problem:
The problem in your code is that you are actually feeding objects of type System.Text.RegularExpressions.Match to the Measure-Object cmdlet, and not numbers.
The Write-Host command is automatically converting the Match object to text when it needs to output it to the console, and that makes you think it looks like numbers.
Solution:
To fix that, change the following line to get values inside the Match objects:
$NUMBERS = Get-Content -Path "C:\Users\Admin\Documents\$NumLog" -Tail 15 |
Select-String -Pattern $regexNum -AllMatches |
% { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Value }
Advice:
To fix problems like this yourself, you can use the the Get-Member cmdlet to check what is the type returned.
In your case, you can send the output of the second Get-Content cmdlet to Get-Member, instead of saving it to a variable:
Get-Content -Path "C:\Users\Admin\Documents\$NumLog" -Tail 15 |
Select-String -Pattern $regexNum -AllMatches |
% { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Groups } | Get-Member