{"id":1420,"date":"2009-05-15T09:40:19","date_gmt":"2009-05-15T17:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/15\/out-csv-revised\/"},"modified":"2009-05-15T09:40:19","modified_gmt":"2009-05-15T17:40:19","slug":"out-csv-revised","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/15\/out-csv-revised\/","title":{"rendered":"Out-CSV Revised"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while ago I published a short function<\/a> to create CSV strings. While working on another task I came across $OFS, which is something I know about but never really think about. $OFS is an intrinsic PowerShell variable that controls the output field separator for arrays. You can modify this variable which made me realize there was a better way to handle my Out-CSV function.  Here’s the revised function.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
Function out-csv {<\/pre>\n
    Param([string]$property=\"Name\"<\/span>,[string]$delimiter=\",\"<\/span>)<\/pre>\n
    <\/pre>\n
BEGIN { <\/pre>\n
   #initialize placeholder array<\/span><\/pre>\n
    $csv=@()<\/pre>\n
}<\/pre>\n
PROCESS {<\/pre>\n
   #force each item to be a string and trim any spaces<\/span><\/pre>\n
   $item=($_.$property | out-string).Trim()<\/pre>\n
   #add item to the array<\/span><\/pre>\n
   $csv+=$item<\/pre>\n
   }<\/pre>\n
 <\/pre>\n
END {<\/pre>\n
    $OFS=$delimiter<\/pre>\n
    #send the comma separated string into the pipeline<\/span><\/pre>\n
    write ($csv -as [string])<\/pre>\n
 }<\/pre>\n
}<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The function is designed so that it can take pipelined input. I’m assuming you want to create a CSV string from a collection of objects based on a single property. The function by default will look for the NAME property of any incoming object and if found, create a CSV separated list using a comma as the value for $OFS.<\/p>\n
get-service | where {$_.status -eq “running”} | out-csv<\/font><\/p>\n
But you can specify any property<\/p>\n
get-eventlog -list | out-csv -property log<\/font><\/p>\n
I like developing functions and scripts that are flexible. Even though 9\/10 times you may want a CSV string, what if you need to create a string with a semi-colon as the delimiter? I don’t want to have to re-write the script so I added a parameter with a default value. If I want something different, it’s as easy as this:<\/p>\n
Get-Process | where {$_.workingset -gt 10MB} | out-csv -delimiter “;”<\/font><\/p>\n
I hope you’ll keep that in mind as you develop your own PowerShell solutions.<\/p>\n
\n
Download this new script here. <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A while ago I published a short function to create CSV strings. While working on another task I came across $OFS, which is something I know about but never really think about. $OFS is an intrinsic PowerShell variable that controls the output field separator for arrays. You can modify this variable which made me realize there was a better way to handle my Out-CSV function.  Here’s the revised function.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[68,198,504,468,28],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-powershell","tag-csv","tag-function","tag-ofs","tag-pipeline","tag-powershell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.sapien.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}