Need to convert a text file into a CSV

Baron164 

Yes, it's almost identical to the template from above.

The key difference in moving to a module is that the top-most $Path variable won't work like that in a module, meaning you need to wrap the handful of "main body" lines into a function definition, and then export that function definition from the module.

So, you're really just abstracting things by one level.

Again, it's rudimentary-only, but here's how things would slightly change to become a module. You can use whatever file and function names you like. I just chose these for the sake of providing an example.

#region Internal supporting functions.
function Get-ExportHeader([string]$Path)
{
    if (Test-Path -Path $Path)
    {
        # Check the first 10 rows of the text file only to prevent pointlessly reading a large file.
        $HeaderExtract = Get-Content -Path $Path -TotalCount 10;

        for ($index = 0; $index -lt $HeaderExtract.Count; $index++)
        {
            $Line = $HeaderExtract[$index];

            if (($Line.Length -gt 0) -and ([regex]::Replace($Line, "[\s-]", "", [System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::CultureInvariant).Length -eq 0))
            {
                # This is our row of dashes where each sequence indicates the field length and is separated by exactly one space.
                # The line prior to this is the header, though we need to be wary that there may not be one (unlikely but possible.)
                # Also, be wary that headers appear to be justified, just like the column values themselves. See XREF_NUM as one example.

                if ($index -gt 0)
                {
                    $CurrentStop = 0;

                    $Header = foreach ($Marker in $Line.Split(' '))
                    {
                        [PSCustomObject] @{
                            Name = if (($CurrentStop + $Marker.Length) -lt $Line.Length) { $HeaderExtract[$index-1].SubString($CurrentStop, $Marker.Length).Trim(); } else { $HeaderExtract[$index-1].SubString($CurrentStop).Trim(); };
                            Position = $CurrentStop;
                            Length = $Marker.Length;
                        }

                        $CurrentStop += $Marker.Length + 1;
                    }

                    return($Header);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    # Indicate we couldn't construct a header.
    return($null);
}

function Get-ExportData([string]$Path, $Header)
{
    $FoundHeader = $false;

    Get-Content -Path $Path | ForEach-Object {
        if (-not $FoundHeader)
        {
            $FoundHeader = ($_.Length -gt 0) -and ([regex]::Replace($_, "[\s-]", "", [System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::CultureInvariant).Length -eq 0);
        }
        else
        {
            if ($_.Length -gt 0 -and -not [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($_.Replace(",", "")))
            {
                [hashtable]$HashTable = [hashtable]::new();

                for ($index = 0; $index -lt $Header.Count; $index++)
                {
                    if ($Header[$index].Position -ge $_.Length)
                    {
                        $HashTable.Add($Header[$index].Name, $null);
                    }
                    elseif ($index -lt ($Header.Count - 1))
                    {
                        $HashTable.Add($Header[$index].Name, $_.SubString($Header[$index].Position, $Header[$index].Length).Trim());
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        $HashTable.Add($Header[$index].Name, $_.SubString($Header[$index].Position).Trim());
                    }
                }
            
                [PSCustomObject]$HashTable;
            }
        }
    }
}
#endregion

#region Exportable function.
function Convert-EmployeeData([string] $Path)
{
    $Header = Get-ExportHeader -Path $Path;

    if ($null -ne $Header)
    {
        Get-ExportData -Path $Path -Header $Header;
    }
}
#endregion

#region Export definitions.
Export-ModuleMember -Function Convert-EmployeeData;
#endregion

What this looks like in practice is:

Cheers,

Lain

Baron164 I think you can use something like this per line, the FIRST_NAME value is $line.SubString(0,5) for example. MI is $line.SubString(31,1). If everything always has the same starting point and a max amount of characters.. You can make variables out of that as input for your update script