Split multiple strings from a text file to create an array in powershell

Question

I'm very new to Powershell ISE and I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

I want to take strings (uxxxx axxxx name email) and have it return as a table with username, admin, and name (want to eventually automate emails). My code is currently like this:

$users = Get-Content ".\FileName.txt"
$line = "Username, Admin, Name, Email"
$parts = $line.Split(" ")

  $Test = Foreach ($user in $users) {
          Select-Object Username, Admin, Name
          }
  $Test | Sort-Object -Property Name | Out-GridView

This is just a watered down version of the code since it will be going through domains and authentication processes, but I was hoping someone could just help me get the table to work for now.

Hard to answer without seeing exact example lines from FileName.txt. $line suggests a comma separated values (CSV) so maybe you could use Import-Csv on the data instead of Get-Content? You split $line on spaces, which will leave the commas in $parts which seems unhelpful - except you don't use $parts so nevermind I guess. Your select-object has no data being pipelined into it, which it would need, but you can't use select-object like that on lines coming from from Get-Content. you can use Select-Object on the output of Import-Csv so if it's possible to use that, do. — TessellatingHeckler
– TessellatingHeckler, Commented Nov 22, 2021 at 4:39
The exact lines are like this: uabcd aabcd John Doe [email protected] with several dozen lines of different data. I'd assume that the data has to be separated properly (comma) but I'm currently working with this. — Soshi
– Soshi, Commented Nov 22, 2021 at 4:44
Hmm, splitting on spaces will turn "John Doe" into two columns. Then it depends whether you can guarantee every line has a space in the name, or not. If any of the lines has one name or three names in that column, those lines will split into different column counts and that will mean data gets read into in the wrong columns. — TessellatingHeckler
– TessellatingHeckler, Commented Nov 22, 2021 at 5:09

TessellatingHeckler · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-22 05:24:53Z

1

With what you've shown, the John Doe part means you can't use Import-Csv or easily split on spaces without having to reassemble that column after.

I am thinking: split on spaces twice from the left, and then with the rest of the string find the last space from the right and pick out around that. Leaving the John Doe column with as many spaces as it has. (This will only work if you can guarantee the username, admin name and email never have spaces in them. If more than one column could have a space in it, you have no obvious way to tell spaces as column separators from spaces as data).

$rows = Get-Content -Path '.\FileName.txt'

$users = foreach ($r in $rows) {

    # Take 2 columns from the left, and store the rest        
    $user, $admin, $rest = $r.Split(' ', 3)

    # Walk back from the right to the first space
    # and pick either side of it
    $i = $rest.LastIndexOf(' ')
    $name = $rest.Substring(0, $i)
    $email = $rest.Substring($i+1)

    # Build an output that can work with Out-GridView
    [PSCustomObject]@{
        Username = $user
        Admin    = $admin
        Name     = $name
        Email    = $email
    }
}

$users | Out-GridView

answered Nov 22, 2021 at 5:24

TessellatingHeckler

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2 Comments

Soshi Over a year ago

I ended up using notepad++ to replace all of the spaces (aside from the names) with commas. I'm not sure if I should still use the above code since I've made these changes, but I'm currently using this:

$rows = Get-Content ".\FileName.txt"  $users = foreach ($r in %rows){            $user, $admin, $name, $email      $parts = $r.split(",") [PSCustomObject]@{         Username = $user         Admin    = $admin         Name     = $name         Email    = $email     } }  $users | Out-GridView

TessellatingHeckler Over a year ago

If you've got commas separating the columns, you can use $users = Import-Csv -Path '.\FileName.txt' -Header User, Admin, Name, Email; $users | Out-GridView.

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