How to skip some lines while sorting a file content using Powershell?

Question

I have written a following script to sort file content based on some column.

$lines = Get-Content $inputFile

foreach($line in $lines){
    if($line.startsWith('*') -or $line.startsWith('-')){
        continue
    }
    if(($line -eq $lines[0])  -or ($line -eq $lines[1]) -or ($line -eq $lines[2])){
        Sort-Object { $line.Substring(70,9) } | set-content $outputFile
    }
}

input file content:

 ...header row...
 ...header row...
 ...header row...
        4
        2
        1
 ....trailor.....

Desired Output:

 ...header row...
 ...header row...
 ...header row...
        1
        2
        3
 ....trailor.....

In my input file, I have first three lines as header and Lat line as trailer. I want to skip these lines while sorting. I tried to use above script. But it's not skipping those lines. Can someone correct me for this?

Martin Brandl · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-12 07:22:04Z

2

If you always want to skip the first three and last one line, you could also adopt your foreach loop:

foreach ($line in $lines[3 .. ($lines.Count -2)])
{
    Write-Host $line
}

Your foreach loop will now starts on the forth element and runs until the line before the last line.

Edit: Here a solution for your example where I create a new array and just sort the specific lines using the Sort-Object cmdlet (alias sort) and finally set the new content using the Set-Content cmdlet:

$lines = Get-Content $inputFile
@($lines[0 .. 2], ($lines[3 .. ($lines.Count -2)] | Sort-Object -Descending), $lines[-1]) | Set-Content $outputFile

edited Apr 12, 2016 at 7:22

answered Apr 12, 2016 at 6:54

Martin Brandl

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4 Comments

Madhusudan Over a year ago

Hi..Thanks for your response! Could you please give command with Sort-Objet, because in my case alos I am skipping but it's not working. SO I want to try your command

Martin Brandl Over a year ago

You have to share us an example and tell us the desired output. Otherwise, im not able to help you.

Martin Brandl Over a year ago

Yes, I added a 2-liner solution that does exactly what you want.

Martin Brandl Over a year ago

You are welcome. I removed the $line.Substring from your edit since that won't work here.

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