Get-content and splitting string into two columns

PowerShell Help
1

I need some help splitting a string into 2 separate columns. I am using get-content to retrieve the data. However, there are no headers in the files I am using. This is what the files look like:
USER1 11/21/2013 13:59
USER2 11/21/2013 14:07
USER3 11/21/2013 14:10
USER3 11/21/2013 14:13

It is gathering the last logon times for users on a particular machine. I want to use get-content to retrieve the data and then turn it into an object with 2 columns, “User” and “Logon Date.”

I can retrieve the content without a problem, but it isn’t formatted nicely. Ultimately, I will be piping the object to out-gridview:

Get-Content \\SERVER\gpotest$\USERS\$Computer.txt | select -Last 10 | Out-GridView -OutputMode Multiple -Title "Logon for Last 5 Users"

Any ideas how I can split each line into 2 columns based on either the space between the user and the date or splitting where an integer starts (the date)? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

2

Personally, I’d use Import-Csv for this. Your file looks like a pretty well-behaved, space-delimited file (without a header row), and you can use Import-Csv to handle that like this:

Import-Csv \\SERVER\gpotest$\USERS\$Computer.txt -Delimiter ' ' -Header 'User', 'Date', 'Time'
3

After that, you can use Select-Object to combine the Date / Time fields:

Import-Csv \\SERVER\gpotest$\USERS\$Computer.txt -Delimiter ' ' -Header 'User', 'Date', 'Time' |
Select-Object -Properties @(
    'User',
    @{ Name = 'LogonDate'; Expression = { "$($_.Date) $($_.Time)" } }
)
4

Getting closer. However the code you put above only creates 2 columns. First “User” column includes the user and the date and the “LogonDate” column includes the time.

User LogonDate

USER1 09/07/2015 QC
USER1 09/09/2015 20:23
euctest1 09/10/2015 11:44
euctest 09/10/2015 12:02
euctest1 09/10/2015 12:07
USER2 09/10/2015 16:12
USER1 09/11/2015 QC
USER1 09/15/2015 QC
USER1 09/19/2015 QC
USER3 11/09/2015 10:25

5

Ah. I can’t see it from your post here, but I suspect what you actually have is a tab-delimited file, which is even easier. Can just use Import-Csv without Select-Object, if that’s the case:

Import-Csv \\SERVER\gpotest$\USERS\$Computer.txt -Delimiter "`t" -Header 'User', 'LogonDate'
6

Yep! Figured that out before I saw your comment. Definitely pointed me in the right direction. Thanks for your help! The following works perfectly:

Import-Csv \\SERVER\gpotest$\USERS\$Computer.txt -Delimiter "`t" -Header 'User', 'Date' |
Select-Object -Property @(
    'User',
    @{ Name = 'Date'; Expression = { "$($_.Date)" } }
) | select -Last 10 | Out-GridView -OutputMode Multiple -Title "Logon for Last 10 Users"